IBM hasn’t really been at the forefront of tech innovation for quite some time now, or at least, that is what its shrunken consumer electronics segment has led us to believe. However, the company is still investing heavily in research and development and like many others, is trying to advance modern computing. The latest breakthrough comes in a revolutionary new chip, manufactured using a 7nm process.

The major milestone is the result of a $3 billion investment in research and was accomplished in collaboration with Global Foundries, Samsung and the SUNY Polytechnic Institute’s Colleges of Nanoscale Science and Engineering in Albany, New York. The scale-down was achieved by using Silicon Germanium (SiGe) channel transistors and Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) lithography integration. Read more »

AMD has definitely been going through some rough times, struggling to retain profitability. It might not seem so on the surface, especially considering the company is working hard on its promising 6th Generation Carrizo A-Series chips and still holding its own in the competitive GPUs market with quality offers, such as the R9 chips. But,for all the technological advancements and move towards true heterogeneous computing, AMD is still struggling to earn enough cash.

This has forced the company’s management into more than one tough decision. The latest of those is another round of layoffs – industry sources claim that after a disappointing Q2 sales report for the company’s APUs, a lot of jobs are in danger. It is hard to say which positions might be affected in particular, but we can only assume that less profitable parts of the company will be hit the hardest. Read more »

AMD has issued a sales warning for the second quarter of this year. What this means is that the company expects its results for Q2 to show lower sales than initially forecasted. AMD is now advising investors that its actual sales for Q2 will be down 8% compared to the first quarter, more than the previous guidance which hovered around 3%.

If you’re wondering what may be to blame for the situation, it’s all apparently related to weaker than expected demand for PCs, according to the chip maker itself. Hence, its APUs (Accelerated Processing Units) have not sold as well as expected. Read more »

Samsung expanded its 850 SSD series with 2TB drives, in both the PRO and EVO lineups. The company says it has seen increased demand for 500GB and bigger SSDs and the 2TB drives are a “strong driver into the era of multi-terabyte SSD solutions.”

The 2TB versions Samsung 850 EVO and 850 PRO are available in 50 countries right now. Read more »

We’ve seen similar videos from its phone division, but now Samsung chose to demonstrate just how seriously in takes build quality for its notebooks. The clip shows extensive torture testing done at a massive industrial scale. The horrors these computers are put through are enough to make any tech geek weep, but it is all for the greater good! Still, we wouldn’t blame you if you look away.

Samsung really seems to be extensive in its stress tests. The video shows quite a few, highly-sophisticated and entirely automated test rigs toying away over unfortunate Samsung Series or Samsung ATIV Book ultrabooks. Read more »

It is no secret that AMD has been struggling to earn money lately. Historically, the legendary chip maker has maintained a steady “runner-up” position behind Intel, especially in terms of desktop hardware, but it looks like the huge shift to mobile devices took the US company by surprise and it is yet to fully adapt.

The possibility of various partnerships and buy-outs has been tossed around quite a lot recently and it really seems like AMD is way overdue for some kind of restructuring if it is going to survive. Industry sources now suggest that chief executive Lisa Su is considering the possibility of splitting AMD businesses, a move which was previously protested against internally and is still officially denied by the company. Read more »

If you’re serious about your gaming hardware and are on the lookout for a new monitor, the new LG 27MU67 offers 4K resolution, 10-bit colors and AMD FreeSync support.

LG already showed off a FreeSync monitor at CES 2015, though that one had “only” 1080p resolution (in 21:9 widescreen format). Read more »

AMD has announced the new 6th Generation A-series processors previously codenamed “Carrizo” and built on the 28nm fabrication technology. Three new Carrizo family A-Series models are announced – A8, A10, and FX – for the notebook platform. These new mobile chips promise twice the gaming performance and two times the battery life against the Intel’s offerings.

The new AMD A-series processors pack 12-computing cores which include 4 CPU cores based on the Excavator microarchitecture and 8 GPU cores based on the 3rd Generation Graphics Core Next architecture. The new A-series aim to deliver the premium level Windows 10 experience along with the support for new DirectX 12 graphics standard. Read more »

After two years since Thunderbolt 2, Intel has taken the wraps off the new Thunderbolt 3 protocol, and there are some major and exciting new features here.

By far the biggest improvement is the switch from the standard DisplayPort that we saw for Thunderbolt 1 and 2 to the more modern USB Type-C. Along with making it more modern and infinitely easier (since there is no wrong way to plug in a USB Type-C cable) it also provides Thunderbolt access to the USB protocol with Intel’s new Alpine Ridge controller, which was absent in the previous versions of Thunderbolt. This means Thunderbolt 3 has support for USB 3.1, Thunderbolt, DisplayPort, and PCI-Express protocols. Read more »

Intel has managed to maintain supremacy on the CPU front for quite some time now. The company has built such a formidable reputation for itself, that it is truly a household name. Few people, however, tend to associate the chip maker with graphics and beastly GPU performance.

With its fifth generation Broadwell architecture, Intel pushed the envelope even further in terms of power to performance ratios. Yet, if you want a truly capable onboard graphics solution, Intel chips typically get outshined by what AMD’s APUs have to offer. The California company has been trying hard to bridge this gap in performance and its latest additions to the Broadwell lineup are a testament to this effort. Read more »

Asus had the busiest day of the year today. Selfie phones, ZenPads, ZenWatches, and Transformer Books aside, the Taiwanese company also found time to make a new ProArt monitor official. It’s the ProArt PA329Q, which is in fact the successor to the PA328Q from last year.

If at this point you’re wondering why you should care, well, know that we’re talking about a monitor that delivers 100% of the Adobe color gamut. That’s incredibly important if color accuracy is required for your job description. Read more »

Apple received a patent for a hybrid keyboard with touch-sensitive keys. The innovative setup will allow users to to apply multitouch gestures without removing their hands from the keyboard.

The keys of the “Fusion keyboard” feature capacitive touch sensors. Read more »

Seventy years of technological advancements have lead us to a point where pocket-sized devices now pack enough computing power to put to shame supercomputers of old. A recently published infographic by Experts Exchange shows some intriguing comparisons between supercomputers, consoles, smart watches and smartphones.

For example, the current top dog on the supercomputer front, the Chinese Tianhe-2 is capable of a staggering 33.86 PFLOPS (peta floating-point operations per second), which would take 18,400 Sony PlayStation 4s consoles to match. Read more »

The launch of the retail version of the Oculus Rift has always been a nebulous “soon” and it may be undergoing another revision. Until recently the target was by the end of 2015, but the launch may slip into next year.

HTC and Valve are hoping to bring their Vive VR headset for the holidays this year and may be cheering at the delay. Read more »

Valve and HTC developed the first VR headset for the upcoming Steam VR platform. The new platform will need games and devs can now sign up for a free HTC Vive Developer Edition headset.

Batches of headsets will be distributed every couple of weeks, but supplies will be limited. Read more »