Intel’s Raptor Lake to Support Both DDR4-3200 And DDR5-5600

Intel’s Alder Lake spearheaded the company’s efforts to turn the tide against AMD. It was successful too, earning praise similar to “Intel is back” from many reviewers. Now that Alder Lake is in the history books, the company now turns to its successor, Raptor Lake. It will be an enhanced version of Alder Lake, as Intel is using its famous tick-tock strategy again. Despite the similarities between the two architectures, one lingering question was whether or not Intel would continue to support DDR4 memory. It did so with Alder Lake, but that launched last year when DDR5 memory was almost non-existent. It has now been confirmed that Intel will indeed support both memory types on its upcoming platform. The news comes from a leaked slide Intel showed to sales teams in China.

The slide was posted by a Twitter uses named @9550pro and it lays out in tidy detail what to expect from Intel’s upcoming Raptor Lake-S platform. Support for DDR4-32oo is unchanged from Alder Lake. Still, it wasn’t clear if Intel would drop it in order to get people to adopt DDR5 instead. The fact that it’s keeping it around for one more generation is good news for upgraders on a budget. It will also help Raptor Lake appeal to more people than if it removed DDR4 support. On the DDR5 side of the equation, the news here is it’s upping the frequencies a bit. Alder Lake maxed out at DDR5-4800, but it will supports speeds up to 5600 on Raptor Lake. It also notes there are “additional PCIe 4.0 lanes for the chipset” but it doesn’t say how many.

(Image: Baidu)

News of support for DDR4 is somewhat surprising, but also welcome. DDR5 memory is still quite expensive and has not seen widespread adoption yet because of it. It’s also only supported on certain Intel-based Z690 motherboards. The rest only support DDR4 currently. It’s also a shot across the bow of AMD, as its upcoming socket, AM5, will likely be DDR5 only. This isn’t confirmed, but it seems like AMD is keen on offering a “next generation” platform. Such a future-looking platform would have no place for antiquated technology like DDR4. It also helps with alliteration in marketing to say DDR5, PCIe 5, socket AM5. Having support for more affordable DDR4 memory could certainly sway upgraders trying to decide between the two platforms though.

Intel’s Raptor Lake is eagerly anticipated as Alder Lake is a solid foundation to improve upon. It’s being touted by Intel as offering more of everything: more cores, more overclocking, and more performance. So far we know the flagship Core i9-13900K will feature eight P-cores and 16 E-cores, for a total of 32 threads. This is an eight-thread increase from Alder Lake’s 24-thread maximum. It’s been rumored that Intel is targeting a 6GHz frequency range for its flagship part. Alder Lake topped out at 5.5GHz on a single core for its binned Core i9-12900KS. AMD has also been talking up overclocking for Zen 4 too. At Computex it showed its upcoming CPU running at 5.5GHz as well. It seems this currently cold war-esque battle will rage anew once both platforms launch later this year.

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Diablo Immortal Raked in $49 Million in Its First Month

Diablo Immortal launched a month ago to much fanfare, and for the first few days, things were good. Players were surprised how much the mobile game felt like a real Diablo title. Then, the in-app purchase hangover hit. Completely leveling up a character would cost many, many thousands of dollars, which has some fans up in arms. Not all of them, though. Plenty of people are pumping money into Diablo Immortal. According to market intelligence firm AppMagic, Activision-Blizzard has raked in a whopping $49 million in the game’s first month, and it still earns more than a million per day. 

The game has proven very sticky in part because the first few hours bring all the cool experiences you’d expect from a Diablo game. There are demons to slay, lots of loot to collect, and powerful abilities to unlock… and then you hit a wall. For me, it was around level 25-30 when I felt the difficulty ramping up faster than my free character’s progression. The only way to keep adventuring is to use Elder Rifts, which are essentially loot boxes dressed up like miniature dungeons. Remember Nephalem Rifts from Diablo III? This is similar but with the addition of random rewards. 

The random rewards in Rifts include legendary gems, which provide powerful bonuses when slotted into your gear. If you don’t have a good selection of these gems, you’ll have to get used to the endless grind and slow progression. Plenty of gamers have ended up spending a dollar here or there — MobileGamer.biz reports that Diablo Immortal’s revenue peaked 10 days after launch with $2.4 million in sales that day. While it has dropped off from that level, Blizzard is still raking in more than a million dollars per day to reach $49 million in the first month. 

It’s important to note that AppMagic’s figures only cover the mobile versions of the game on iOS and Android. There’s a beta desktop client where players can also purchase premium items to boost their rifts. So, Blizzard could be making even more money that doesn’t appear in AppMagic’s stats. 

As much as some of us object to aggressive in-app purchases, Diablo Immortal is just the latest evidence that it works. Mobile games attract casual players who don’t mind dropping a few bucks here and there on a free game. It also gives the “whales” something to do with their overflowing bank accounts. These people will happily spend thousands of dollars to transform their character into a wrecking ball, much to publishers’ delight. 

It’s impressive to see Diablo Immortal maintaining its daily revenue throughout the first month, even with all the negative press. This is before Blizzard has even rolled out any new content. It will undoubtedly have more premium experiences ready for paying customers. The rest of you will just have to keep grinding or wait for Diablo IV, which won’t feature the same aggressive monetization.

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Google Allowed Banned Russian Company to Siphon User Data

(Photo: Mitchell Luo/Unsplash) Google appears to have provided a Russian tech company continued access to sensitive user data, despite industry sanctions related to Russia’s war with Ukraine.

RuTarget, an advertising technology firm owned by Russia’s biggest state bank, enjoyed unfettered visibility into Google’s user data until June 23, according to a new ProPublica report. RuTarget typically seeks out user data to support its core function: placing digital ads on behalf of other brands. But sanctions directly related to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine dictated several months ago that Google and other entities stop supplying data visibility to a list of Russian companies including RuTarget. This restriction seems to have been ignored…about 700 times.

Reporting on research from digital ad analysis firm Adalytics, ProPublica says Google continuously allowed RuTarget (also known as Segmento) to “access and store data about people browsing websites and apps in Ukraine and other parts of the world.” This is despite having been warned about Russian exploitation several times. “Adalytics identified close to 700 examples of RuTarget receiving user data from Google after the company was added to a US Treasury list of sanctioned entities on Feb. 24,” the report reads. “The data sharing between Google and RuTarget stopped four months later on June 23, the day ProPublica contacted Google about the activity.”

The US Treasury’s sanctions against Russian companies appears to have been ignored by Google. (Photo: Roman Boed/Wikimedia Commons)

The aforementioned US Treasury list was an April 6 announcement that imposed full blocking sanctions on a slew of Russian and Russian-linked entities. The list included Sberbank, the massive Russian state bank that owns RuTarget. Under the sanctions, Google and other US entities were (and still are) meant to halt all business with listed organizations, both as a way of “punishing” Russia for the invasion and preventing accidental military aid. The sanctions were further emphasized by a letter sent to Google and other ad tech companies by a bipartisan group of US senators, who warned that the companies’ data could become “a goldmine for foreign intelligence services.”

Unfortunately, Google seems to have run in the opposite direction, at least as far as RuTarget is concerned. The data RuTarget was able to obtain post-sanction includes that associated with Ukranian IP addresses, mobile phone identifiers, location information, and general web activity. Such information could aid Russia’s attempts to track larger groups or locate persons of interest.

This isn’t the first time Google has been caught in bed with sanctioned Russian companies. In April, Adalytics similarly found that Google had continued placing ads on Russian websites that had sat on the US Treasury’s sanctions list for years.

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The UK Will Test Delivering Chemo Drugs by Drone

The Isle of Wight’s chalk hills. (Photo: Jonathan Ridley/Unsplash)) The UK’s National Health Service (NHS) has identified a quick, environmentally-friendly way to transport vital chemotherapy drugs to remote communities: drone delivery.

In an announcement marking the organization’s 74th birthday, the NHS stated it would begin testing the use of drones to deliver chemo drugs to patients in hard-to-reach locations. Remote communities usually receive chemo drugs by car, boat, or helicopter. These modes of transport are relatively slow, which can pose a danger to drugs with short shelf lives. Used repeatedly, they also emit significant amounts of carbon. Drones, meanwhile, can get life-saving drugs to patients in a timely manner while helping the NHS work toward its goal of becoming carbon-neutral.

The trial will begin with the Isle of Wight, an island two miles away from England’s southern coast. Despite the island’s 150,000-strong population, chemo drugs have to be transported in from the mainland. This usually takes a four-hour trip involving “at least two car journeys and one hovercraft or ferry journey,” according to the NHS. A drone, which can transport drugs directly from the pharmacy at Portsmouth Hospitals University NHS Trust to the Isle of Wight’s St Mary’s Hospital, can conduct the trip in a quarter of the time.

(Photo: Apian)

The NHS has partnered with Apian, a medical drone startup whose founders include former NHS employees, to prepare for and run the trial. Integral to the trial are Apian’s fully-electric drones, which were developed by Skylift. The drones (which look like small, decorated airplanes) can fly for up to 1.5 hours on a single charge and reach speeds up to 100 miles per hour. They’re also autonomous, but three trained safety pilots will monitor each flight throughout the trial: one at the take-off location, one at the landing location, and one at Apian’s control center, which is monitored by the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority.

“The Island has a long history of innovation,” said Darren Cattell, CEO of the Isle of Wight NHS Trust, in the organization’s announcement. “We are still at a relatively early stage but the use of drones to transport medical supplies is a concept that has radical and positive implications for both the NHS and for patients across the UK as well as the Isle of Wight.”

Though the NHS and Apian performed test flights without payloads last year, it plans to begin conducting real test deliveries as early as this month. Should the deliveries prove successful, the NHS will extend its test deliveries to Northumbria, a region of northern England.

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Mojo Vision Details Its First Smart Contact Lens

The way we interact with technology is always changing, and some in the industry claim the next big step is the metaverse; a spatial version of the internet that mixes digital content with the real world. But how is one supposed to interact with the metaverse? Today’s virtual and augmented reality hardware is clunky and inefficient, but a smart contact lens? That sounds like science fiction, but we may be getting close. A company called Mojo Vision says its smart contact lenses are now a functional prototype with a micro LED display and medical-grade micro-batteries. 

Drew Perkins, the CEO of Mojo Vision, recently announced he was the first to get an “on-eye” demonstration of the company’s technology. Currently, he’s only wearing one lens at a time, and just in one-hour increments. Mojo Vision’s eventual goal is to make two lenses work as a pair, allowing the wearer to see images in 3D, similar to the way VR and AR currently work. 

The Mojo lens is fully self-contained, sporting a Micro LED display with 14,000 pixels per inch, but it’s only 0.2 inches (0.5mm) in diameter. Still, Mojo says it’s the highest density display ever created for dynamic content, which it has to be when it’s literally sitting on your eye. Perkins says using the Mojo allowed him to view a live compass, as well as see blocks of text to read off like a teleprompter. It even displayed a single monochrome image of Einstein. Since there’s no interface you can touch, all navigation is controlled with eye movements. 

We have completed a successful wear of our fully functional Mojo Lens prototype on eye! Read CEO Drew Perkins' blog post on what it was like to wear a smart contact lens here: https://t.co/VPRyqi06ek#smartcontactlens #mojolens #invisiblecomputing pic.twitter.com/RClgdyGikt

— Mojo Vision (@MojoVisionInc) June 29, 2022

The remarkable thing about the Mojo lenses is that they’re mostly self-contained. The device runs on a tiny ARM M0 processor with a microbattery and custom integrated circuit for power management. That makes them on the bulky side, as you can see from the images above. So, if you were hoping for all-day comfort, that’s still a way off. It comes across as very futuristic, but Mojo is still constrained by certain technological limitations. For example, the lens relies on a “relay accessory,” which is worn around the neck. This device contains a processor, GPU, and a 5GHz radio to send and receive data from the lens. Currently, the user also has to wear a hat with an integrated antenna for improved connectivity. This is something Mojo is working to eliminate in the prototype, according to CNET.

So, the tech is still far from perfect, but Mojo Vision believes it is on track to developing a usable piece of technology that could get FDA approval. The company plans to conduct multiple clinical studies to ensure people can use the Mojo lens safely for longer periods of time. Perkins says he believes we’re about ten years away from having these devices in our heads. 

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Move Over GPU Shortage, Here Comes the CPU Materials Shortage

(Photo: Samsung) Enthusiasts recently breathed a sigh of relief as the GPU shortage came to an end. The collapse of cryptocurrency means GPUs have rapidly become available, with some even selling below MSRP. We’re not out of the woods yet though, according to a new report. One of the largest suppliers of raw materials used to make silicon wafers is experiencing unexpected price hikes it must pass on to customers like TSMC. TSMC will likely then pass those costs along to their customers, and so forth. In the end, you could see the result of this pricing chain reaction when next-gen CPUs and GPUs arrive this fall.

Tokyo-based Showa Denko supplies chemicals and other base materials to companies like TSMC and Toyota. It provides these materials early in the supply chain, so price changes typically affect upstream manufacturing costs. Bloomberg reports the company has already experienced a dozen price hikes this year alone, with more on the way. The catalysts for this upheaval are COVID-19 lockdowns, the war in Ukraine, and a weakening of the Japanese currency. Showa Denko’s Chief Financial Officer Hideki Somemiya told Bloomberg the pricing situation has caused it to begin dropping unprofitable product lines as a result. He also doesn’t expect the situation to improve until sometime in 2023 either.

Samsung’s 3nm GAA MBCFET design is likely to get a lot more expensive for its customers. (Image: Samsung)

“A big theme this year common to all the players in the materials industry is how much cost burden we’d be able to convince customers to share with us,” he told Bloomberg. “The current market moves require us to ask twice the amount we had previously calculated.” Bloomberg has previously reported that both Samsung and TSMC have already notified their customers of impending price hikes. It’s not clear what TSMC is planning, but Samsung is reported to be looking at a 20 percent price increase. The impact of these price changes will likely be felt far and wide. The article says it will affect consumers of “durable goods,” which are products meant to last a long time.

This is just another factor that is contributing to a period of uncertainty for the semiconductor industry. Previously we noted the industry at large was experiencing a sense of “pessimism.” This is due to the economic forces driving up prices and possibly even delaying products. Digitimes just reported that TSMC’s three biggest customers — Apple, AMD, and Nvidia — have already asked it to reduce future wafer orders.

Such an unprecedented request is causing anxiety throughout the industry. Silicon customers rarely look to scale back plans they made years ago. All this will lead to an interesting second half of 2022. AMD, Intel, and Nvidia are looking to launch their next-generation products in an uncertain environment. With the GPU shortage officially over, it remains to be seen what pricing and supply will look like. Given the current inflation levels, as well as the rumored performance levels on offer, it’s not hard to predict next-gen GPUs and CPUs will cost a pretty penny.

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SSD Cooling Tower Reduces Temps by 50 Percent

(Image: JiuShark) We all love moving into new generations of power and performance on our PCs. Going from DDR4 to DDR5, PCIe 4 to PCIe 5, and so forth is always exciting. However, there’s always one big drawback, and that’s the fact that there’s rarely a free lunch in the world of PC performance. Getting twice the horsepower usually means a lot more heat is produced. That could be the case with next-generation PCIe 5.0 SSDs, which are coming out soon. They promise data transfer rates up to 14GB/s, which is twice the current amount. The cost for that performance will likely be excessive heat, the likes of which we’ve never seen with SSDs before. To keep that heat at bay companies are introducing radical SSD cooling solutions. The latest is an active cooling heatsink/fan combo that could have been used on a GPU many years ago.

The tower cooler is manufactured by a Chinese company named JiuShark. The cooler was posted to Twitter by a user named SI-129. It is oddly yet simply named M.2 Three and is designed to offer extreme SSD cooling. The word extreme is no hyperbole either. According to benchmark charts posted by Tom’s Hardware, it offers dramatic reductions in SSD temps. The chart shows a Samsung 980 Pro running at 71C with its stock heatsink. With the M.2 Three in passive mode (no fan), that drops to a comfortable 49C. With the fan active, temps drop further to a chilly 33C. Temperature improvements for the SSD controller are even larger. The company says the 980 Pro will hit 92C in stock trim, but passive mode takes that down to 57C. Turning on the fan drops it all the way down to 40C.

(Image: JiuShark)

The cooler measures 82mm tall and 74.5mm long. As the benchmarks note, the fan is optional but it doesn’t seem like it would add much noise. It spins up to 3,000 rpm and pushes 14 CFM at 25.4 dBa. That’s equivalent to what we consider a “quiet” air cooler for a CPU. It also makes us wonder if we’ll get to the point with these things where we’ll need a dual-fan, push-pull configuration. The fan can be mounted on either side of the aluminum heatsink, and is just 60mm thick. It has 27 fins and a single copper heat-pipe with a nickel coating running through it.

Pricing for this little guy is just around $13 USD when converted from yuan. All this leads to the inevitable question: is this something people would even consider for their SSD? The natural answer seems to be they would, if it required it, but therein lies the rub. Our SSDs have never really needed this level of cooling before. However, the Samsung 980 Pro is a PCIe 4.0 SSD, and if it’s hitting those temps now we shudder to think what the next-gen might bring.

However, companies will also be boosting efficiency for PCIe 5.0 SSDs to combat the rising heat levels. It’s not a given at this point that next-gen SSDs will require active cooling. For example, Phison has said it would be reducing the number of enterprise PCIe lanes from eight to four to reduce power consumption by 30 percent. It also said it’s moving from a 16nm process to a 7nm process. The Phison executive said he absolutely expects PCIe 5.0 enterprise SSDs to have active cooling. However, he said its consumer drives will just use a heatsink like current drives. PCIe 5.0 SSDs will arrive in the near future, so we’ll be able to better understand their cooling needs.

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