Components & Peripheral Devices

Intel Wins Court Appeal Of $1.2B EU Antitrust Fine

by Dylan Martin

The European Union’s second highest court annulled the European Commission’s $1.2 billion fine against Intel on Wednesday, saying that the antitrust authority failed to prove that an OEM rebate scheme by Intel was anti-competitive. However, one Intel partner says he doesn’t think the chipmaker will revisit the program because rival AMD has much greater influence in the market today.
Nvidia May Bail On $40B Arm Deal As SoftBank Ponders Arm IPO: Report

by Dylan Martin

A new report from Bloomberg says Nvidia has told partners that it doesn’t believe its $40 billion acquisition of Arm will close after facing stern pushback from regulators. At the same time, Arm’s current owner, Japan-based SoftBank Group, is reportedly considering the possibility of taking Arm public as an alternative. Spokespeople for Nvidia and SoftBank maintain that the blockbuster chip deal is still on.
Facebook Parent Meta Taps Nvidia GPUs For ‘Fastest AI Supercomputer’

by Dylan Martin

With 16,000 GPUs to support its ‘metaverse’ aspirations, Meta’s new AI Research SuperCluster will consist of 2,000 Nvidia DGX A100 systems, which will make it the ‘largest customer installation of Nvidia DGX A100 systems’ when it’s fully deployed later this year, according to Nvidia.
Intel To Invest $20B To Start Factory ‘Mega-Site’ In Ohio

by Dylan Martin

The move means that Intel will have significantly greater manufacturing capacity in the United States, which only represents 12 percent of global semiconductor manufacturing. ‘Today’s investment marks another significant way Intel is leading the effort to restore U.S. semiconductor manufacturing leadership,’ Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger says of what will eventually become ‘one of the largest semiconductor manufacturing sites in the world.’
Apple Loses Key Chip Architect To Microsoft: Report

by Wade Tyler Millward

Mike Filippo joined Apple in 2019 as a chip architect.
Nvidia Makes HPC Play With Bright Computing Acquisition

by Joseph F. Kovar

‘The timing was right. In order for Bright Computing to grow, it needed somebody bigger to back them. And we both saw the opportunity to come together because people are always asking why Nvidia doesn’t have its own HPC management software,’ says Charlie Boyle, Nvidia’s vice president and general manager for DGX systems.
Intel Names Michelle Johnston Holthaus As PC Unit’s New Leader

by Dylan Martin

Michelle Johnston Holthaus, Intel’s top sales and marketing executive, is taking over as head of the Client Computing Group, the chipmaker’s biggest moneymaker. The move means that Intel’s two biggest business units – CCG and the Datacenter and AI Group, which is led by Sandra Rivera – will be led by women.
Intel Names Micron Exec To Succeed George Davis As New CFO

by Dylan Martin

David Zinsner is taking over Intel’s CFO role from George S. Davis, who plans to retire in May. Zinsner was most recently executive vice president and CFO of Micron Technology, a Boise, Idaho-based company that manufactures memory and storage products.
CES 2022: Qualcomm Partners With Microsoft On AR Glasses

by Wade Tyler Millward

Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon made the announcement during one of the few in-person press conferences held during CES 2022 in Las Vegas.
CES 2022: Lenovo’s New ThinkPad Debut Expected In May

by Wade Tyler Millward

The ThinkPad Z13 and Z16 are pre-loaded with Windows 11, powered by Next-Gen AMD Ryzen PRO Processors for mobile and feature the Microsoft Pluton security processor.
AMD Reveals ‘3-D’ Ryzen 7, Teases 5nm Ryzen 7000 Desktop CPUs

by Dylan Martin

In addition to the new Ryzen 7 5800X3D due out this spring, AMD is promising a whole new generation of Ryzen desktop processors in the second half of this year and said that the CPUs will be capable of hitting 5GHz on all cores.
AMD’s New Ryzen 6000 Laptop CPUs Reach 5GHz, 24-Hour Battery Life

by Dylan Martin

Revealed at CES 2022, the chipmaker says the new Ryzen 6000 mobile CPUs come with big performance and efficiency gains thanks to the new Zen 3+ architecture, which is complemented by the graphical horsepower of AMD’s RDNA 2 architecture.
CES 2022: HP Details New Dragonfly, EliteBook, Envy Devices

by Wade Tyler Millward

The HP devices will come out in March, April and the spring.
CES 2022: HP Reveals Laptops With New AMD CPUs

by Wade Tyler Millward

HP’s EliteBook 805 G9 Series of PCs will have Microsoft’s Windows 11 operating system and AMD’s Ryzen PRO 6000 Series processors
Analysts: FTC Makes Nvidia-Arm Deal Unlikely, Arm’s Future Uncertain

by Dylan Martin

Analysts say the new FTC lawsuit makes the Nvidia-Arm deal very unlikely and would leave Arm with few good options for its future. ‘Unfortunately, in this situation, in order to grow, [Arm needs] a lot of money because they need to be investing in parallel categories beyond mobility,’ one analyst says.