Following the big shift of working from home and remote classes for students, demand for laptops has surged. However, with the dark clouds of a recessions looming, companies may put spending on hardware on hold, and for individual consumers, the weak economic sentiment could be a dampener.

Publication: ET Prime

AMD’s Ryzen 4000 mobile processors launched a while back, taking the performance crown from Intel by securing an overwhelming victory in both performance and efficiency. Now, we’re about to see the desktop counterparts of the 7nm APUs in the coming months. These will be AMD’s first octa-core APUs, bringing unprecedented levels of performance to the budget market.

Publication: Hardware Times 

It’s been a busy day for Google Stadia. After onboarding two new titles, Jotun: Valhalla Edition and Sundered: Eldritch Edition, Stadia has also announced that Elder Scrolls Online is officially launching on June 16. Google Stadia also announced that it’s got a new 1440p streaming option for stadia.com, and it has been rolled out today.

Publication: HT Tech – Hindustan Times 

The Indian IT industry has asked state governments to extend labour law relaxations to the services industry, arguing that it would help the $191billion sector, chiefly reliant on global customers, to cope with the “severe economic downturn” caused by the Covid-19 virus outbreak.

Publication: ET Telecom 

Lenovo on Thursday launched a free service called PC Pal to help consumers find perfect devices based on their lifestyle needs. According to the company, the service will offer neutral, unbiased recommendations based on individual requirements, to help consumers make informed purchase decisions. The service is designed to simplify the purchase process and reduce the hassle of selecting the right laptop.

Publication: Telangana Today 

Dell Technologies is keen to partner and collaborate with the government and private institutions to build a technology-led education system in India, that is geared to develop skills for the future workforce. “Our mission is to technologically enable human progress in every aspect of life…education is one of the areas which will have maximum impact by bringing in technology and so it is a natural focus area for us in India,” Alok Ohrie, president and managing director, Dell Technologies India said, in a webinar ‘Transforming Tomorrow – Skilling Today’s Youth with Technology for Workforce 2030’.

Publication: Livemint

Competition in the laptops space is set to heat up with Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi advancing to next month its foray into a market dominated by the likes of HP, Dell and Lenovo, who are all trying to tap the current surge in demand with a bulk of India Inc continuing to work from home. Raghu Reddy, chief business officer at Xiaomi India, told ET that the company though won’t be following the smartphone model of affordability, or pricing the laptops at the entry-level, and will instead target power users such as content creators, gamers and students.

Publication: The Economic Times 

In India, however, because the option to order custom configurations wasn’t available (until now), buyers had to make do with select basic, sort of entry-level models of Mac computers and laptops, without customisations. Take the recently launched 13-inch MacBook Pro (2020) for instance. The 13-inch MacBook Pro for 2020 can go up to 10th-generation quad-core Intel Core processors with Turbo Boost speeds of up to 4.1GHz, up to 32GB RAM, and up to 4TB SSD storage.

Publication: Financial Express 

Xiaomi recently added new AMD-powered RedmiBook laptops to its extensive product portfolio. After establishing a strong presence in India’s smartphone, television, and smart home markets, the brand is now looking to expand its product portfolio to notebooks. Xiaomi recently unveiled a ton of products, including new versions of the RedmiBook 13, RedmiBook 14, and RedmiBook 16, all of which are powered by AMD Ryzen 4000 series processors.

Publication: Moneycontrol

Addressing those concerns, Trey confirmed that Ice Lake-SP was going to launch in the coming months with Sapphire Rapids expected to land in 2021. The latter will be based on the second iteration of the 10nm process, forming part of the Eagle Stream server platform in 2021. Rumors suggest that Sapphire Rapids will support DDR5 memory as well as the PCIe 4 standard with an increased number of lanes to compete with AMD’s Milan chips.

Publication: Hardware Times

Data center capacity in India is expected to double from the current 500-520 MW in the nect five years due to policy initiatives, widening customer base and increasing corporate requirements for data storage, independent property consultancy CBRE said. Markets across Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Pune and NCR are expected to witness supply addition of up to 40% in 2020.

Publication: The Times of India 

South Korean tech giant Samsung on Wednesday unveiled a new mobile chip, the Exynos 880 SoC, featuring an integrated 5G modem and AI capabilities. The Exynos 880 includes a 5G cellular modem that enables lag-less streaming and rapid downloads. It facilitates the next-generation 5G experiences such as mixed reality (MR) and cloud-gaming.

Publication: Business Standard 

Lenovo has introduced two new devices to its Yoga and IdeaPad line of laptops. The Yoga Duet 7i and IdeaPad Duet 3i are the first convertible devices with detachable Bluetooth keyboards to launch in their respective categories. This is similar to Microsoft’s Surface line of hybrid laptops. The Yoga Duet 7i is a premium 2-in-1 Windows 10 tablet, with support for optional LTE connectivity, a presence-sensing system for security, and features Intel’s 10th Gen CPUs.

Publication: Gadgets 360 

Apple has released a new software update for MacBook users today. The latest software update for MacBooks — macOS Catalina 10.15.5 — comes with a new feature called “Battery health management,” that is said to improve the battery life of the device. This will be done by reducing the rate at which the battery ages as this feature monitors the battery temperature history and its charging patterns. On the basis of the measurements it collects, the battery health management will reduce the maximum charge of the battery when this mode is enabled.

Publication: The Times of India 

COVID-19 has affected almost every nation across the globe and continues to expand. While health professionals, researchers, scientists, and governments are scrambling to deal with this situation and bring public and social life back to normalcy, WHO has declared that this pandemic is here to stay, at least until a vaccine to combat the disease is developed.

Publication: CRN

To address consumer needs driven by the pandemic, India needs to expedite the process of 5G adoption, according to Rajen Vagadia, V-P and President, Qualcomm India & SAARC. “This country needs 5G more than anything,” said Vagadia in a video interaction with journalists from BusinessLine in Mumbai. The increased data consumption and the need for faster data speeds, especially during the pandemic, when people across the country are mandated to work and learn from home, make 5G adoption important, he emphasised.

Publication: The Hindu BusinessLine 

Cinebench R20 results for the AMD Ryzen 9 3900XT and Ryzen 5 3600XT just leaked and appear to put Intel’s recently-launched Comet Lake S i9-10900K and i7-10700K in serious trouble. The leaks, posted over on the Chiphell forums, indicate that AMD’s Matisse Refresh chips might be more potent than we thought. The Ryzen 9 3900XT’s single-core score was particularly interesting.

Publication: Notebook Check 

Dell Technologies recently announced Dell EMC PowerStore – a modern infrastructure platform built from the ground up with superior technology and expertise to address the challenges of the data era. “Data visibility has become the top priority for majority of organizations. Therefore, to accelerate digital transformation, IT organizations must address their data needs by simplifying and automating their IT as well as by consolidating systems for greater control,” said Amit Luthra, director and GM – Data Centre Solutions, Dell Technologies India.

Publication: DataQuest

The HP EliteBook 805 G7 and HP EliteBook 800 G7 Series PCs feature 13.3-inch, 14-inch and 15.6-inch diagonal screens, designed to meet the demands of the multi-task, multi-place workday, with both AMD and Intel-based processor options. The HP EliteBook 805 Series PCs are powered by AMD Ryzen PRO processors with Radeon VEGA graphics. The HP EliteBook x360 830 G7 is the first mainstream business convertible with 4×4 LTE antennas, lowered by up to 10th Gen six-core Intel Core vPro processors.

Publication: India Tv

ASUS announced a new range of motherboards based on the latest B550 chipsets. The AMD B550 motherboards enable 20 general-purpose PCIe 4.0 lanes from 3rd Gen AMD Ryzen desktop processors, and the primary PCIe slots offer 16 lanes of PCIe 4.0 connectivity. Other features include a robust power delivery, increased DRAM speeds and enhanced BIOS flashing and flashback. The boards are aimed towards those looking to either upgrade their mean machines or build a new one, be it high-end gaming or productivity rigs.

Publication: Stuff

The most notable highlight on these models is the AMD Ryzen 4000 series processors. Users can choose any of three models with an option to choose between the Ryzen 5 4500 processor and the Ryzen 7 4700U processor. Redmi claims that these chips provide up to 60 per cent more performance than the previous generation. These processors are accompanied by the Vega 6 and Vega 7 integrated graphics.

Publication: India Today 

Planning to assemble a new gaming PC to up the ante? Then considering getting a premium monitor that offers low-latency, higher refresh rate, and good color reproduction. We have curated a list of premium gaming monitors available in India. These are some of the best screens that one can hook-up to their PC and get never-before like gaming experience. Do note that, as these are the premium monitors, they are slightly on the expensive side.

Publication: Gizbot

After watching 50,000 episodes of Pac-Man being played, Nvidia’s AI was able to recreate a convincing replica of the game from nothing. On the 40-year anniversary of the beloved game Pac-Man, Nvidia, known for its graphic processing unit technology, announced that it has trained an AI to create an operational replica of the game simply from watching it being played 50,000 times — no human intervention required.

Publication: News18

During the initial 45 days of the lockdown imposed to prevent the spread of novel coronavirus, or COVID-19, beginning March 25, Indians across the country could not purchase any product except essentials like medicines and grocery. With the partial lifting from May 4 onwards, electronic retailers and online platforms are seeing a revival in demand for personal electronic goods like computers, laptops and mobile phones.

Publication: Moneycontrol

Secretary General of the Commonwealth Patricia Scotland has called out the government’s Digital India project as “a new hope for other developing and aspiring countries of the Commonwealth.”

Publication: The Economic Times

Microsoft Azure IoT platform is currently leading the overall Internet of Things (IoT) landscape in 26 out of 35 capabilities across Edge IoT, Cloud IoT and Platform Performance categories, a new report has documented. Amazon Web Services (AWS) led in 10 out of 35 capabilities in the overall IoT evaluation while Huawei ranked third offering edge to cloud capabilities, according to Counterpoint Research which used its proprietary CORE (Competitive Rankings & Evaluation) framework that evaluated leading 20 IoT platform players to reach this conclusion.

Publication: Express Computer

As you stream your favourite movies or TV series on Netflix, Disney Plus or Hulu, or connect with your team via video meet app Zoom, leading Cloud service provider Amazon Web Services (AWS) in the backdrop is ensuring seamless, scalable and secure connectivity to help people at home and organisations function while they can’t operate normally at work.

Publication: Express Computer

The covid-19 pandemic has driven investments in cloud infrastructure across companies, but so has the need for skilled personnel who can work with these new systems. India is among countries in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region which will face a skill gap.

Publication: Mint

IT services provider, Infosys Ltd, will resume operations in a second phase this week, with 15% of its employees expected to return to office. This comes when the government has allowed easing of lockdown restrictions across the country.

Publication: Mint

 The IT industry in Hyderabad and Telangana will keep up its growth momentum even in the future, asserted Telangana IT and Industries Minister KT Rama Rao. Though coronavirus pandemic has impacted several industries, the IT industry because of the kind of ecosystem Hyderabad provides, will rebound and maintain its growth as in the past, he said.

Publication: Telanagana Today

The Covid-19 pandemic has thrown up unique and unforeseen challenges for businesses globally and locally, for Telangana, especially Hyderabad. At the same time, it has unlocked new opportunities for those who are ready to innovate amid this new normal.

Publication: The Times of India

As I reported a while back, AMD’s Ryzen 4000 desktop APUs won’t be getting PCIe 4.0 support with the new B550 motherboards. Instead, that privilege will be limited to the Ryzen 3000 (Matisse) CPUs. This was today confirmed by a bunch of B550 motherboard specs shared on Twitter.  As you can see, PCIe 4.0 speeds will be limited to Matisse, while Renoir APUs will get the older PCIe 3.0 standard, and that too across 8 lanes instead of the traditional 16.

Publication: Hardware Times 

The first quarter of 2020 has been shaky for most businesses with the COVID-19 pandemic grinding most to a halt. However, amid these trying times certain semiconductor firms are having their best fiscal quarter yet. That’s right, we’re talking about chipmakers, Intel, AMD and NVIDIA. The latter disclosed its Q1 earnings yesterday and they’re quite impressive. Although gaming still contributes to the majority of profits, NVIDIA’s Data Center business has started to become the crown of Jensen’s green empire.

Publication: Hardware Times 

IT exports from Telangana has grown by 17.93 per cent in the last financial year at Rs 1.28 lakh crore even as the sector created about 40,000 new jobs. Despite the onset of the COVID-19 during the last quarter of the financial year 2019-2020, the export growth of the state managed to record a phenomenal 17.93 per cent growth for the full financial year. This is more than double that of the national growth, an official press release quoted IT Minister KT Rama Rao as saying.

Publication: ETCIO – The Economic Times 

In a country like India where personal computers (PC) penetration is abysmally low vis-à-vis other emerging markets such as Brazil and China and where electronic transactions and learning are picking up pace, Beijing-based computer hardware and electronics maker Lenovo is hoping to capitalise on the “unprecedented demand” for its products.

Publication: BW BusinessWorld 

Microsoft has built a new powerful supercomputer in collaboration with Artificial Intelligence (AI) startup OpenAI, making new infrastructure available in Azure to train extremely large AI models. Microsoft announced a multi-year supercomputer partnership with OpenAI in 2019, including a $1 billion investment by the tech giant. The supercomputer developed for OpenAI is a single system with more than 285,000 CPU cores, 10,000 GPUs and 400 gigabits per second of network connectivity for each GPU server.

Publication: Express Computers 

Lenovo Group , the world’s biggest maker of personal computers, reported a deep slump in fourth-quarter profit due to disruptions caused by the coronavirus crisis, although the result was far better than expectations. Lenovo Chairman Yang Yuanqing told Reuters production was back on track and he expects to see year-on-year revenue growth this quarter for its PC and smart devices business and its data centre business as more people work from home permanently.

Publication: Gadgets Now 

NVIDIA today reported revenue for the first quarter ended April 26, 2020, of $3.08 billion, up 39 percent from $2.22 billion a year earlier, and down 1 percent from $3.11 billion in the previous quarter. GAAP earnings per diluted share for the quarter were $1.47, up 130 percent from $0.64 a year ago, and down 4 percent from $1.53 in the previous quarter.

Publication: IT News Online 

Nvidia Corp on Thursday forecast second-quarter revenue above analysts’ estimates, as demand surges for its chips used in data centers that power the shift to working remotely due to the coronavirus outbreak. The chipmaker said it expects current-quarter revenue of $3.65 billion, plus or minus 2%, while analysts on average were expecting $3.29 billion, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.

Publication: Reuters

To ensure fast, reliable and secure Wi-Fi connectivity for smooth gaming and streaming experience at home, chip giant Intel has acquired Rivet Networks, the company that made the Killer brand of gaming-centric networking cards, for an undisclosed sum. Rivet Networks’ key products, including its Killer brand, will integrate into Intel’s broader PC Wi-Fi portfolio.

Publication: Telangana Today 

Intel has for the longest time lagged behind AMD when it came to integrated GPU performance. With Tiger Lake, that could very well change. At CES, we got to experience gaming on a Tiger Lake-based laptop with nothing but the onboard Intel Xe iGPU. The experience was fairly smooth, even with the laptop set to mirror the output to a big LCD. While we were not given any details about the processor, its core count or the memory on the iGPU, it was still impressive to see Overwatch run in FullHD off of an integrated GPU.

Publication: Digit

During the keynote at CES 2017, AMD announced that they were committing to supporting the AM4 socket till 2020. However, AMD announced the Zen3 architecture and revealed that unfortunately, the AM4 socket would not be supported by the new architecture. AMD has announced that they will continue to support the AM4 socket, particularly the B450 and X470 chipset based motherboards with a firmware update, however, there are going to be a significant number of caveats.

Publication: Digit 

Regardless, AMD has lowered the price of the Ryzen 9 3900X to $409, more than $100 less than the newly launched 10900K which is selling for $529 at the moment. The original price on Newegg is $439 but using the coupon code “EMCDKGR34”, you can get another $30 discount, bringing the price down to $409. You also get three months of Xbox Game Pass free with the processor. Here’s the link.

Publication: Hardware Times 

Microsoft on Tuesday announced the availability of its collaboration device Surface Hub 2S in India. The all-in-one digital whiteboard, meeting platform, and teamwork collaborative computing device designed for the modern workplace is priced at ₹11,89,999, which includes a Surface Hub 2 Camera and a Surface Hub 2 Pen. The product will be available via authorised Hub resellers, Microsoft said, adding that the Steelcase Roam mobile stand priced at ₹1,17,500 is also available via these authorised outlets.

Publication: The Hindu 

AMD announced the Radeon RX 5600 XT back during CES 2020 and a few weeks later, started offering a new VBIOS that offered 14 Gbps GDDR6 data rate and increased clock speeds. Initially, AMD’s add-in board (AIB) partners offered split SKUs — some cards came with the new VBIOS out-of-the-box while others required a separate firmware update. Now, AMD is making available an updated list of RX 5600 XT units that can either be flashed with the new firmware or are available updated by default.

Publication: Notebook Check 

China’s Lenovo Group, the world’s biggest maker of personal computers (PCs), posted a better-than-expected quarterly profit on Wednesday and said it could benefit from the “new normal” of working from home.  “This trend is not only leading to a growth in PCs and smart devices, but also in the supporting datacentres and infrastructure to power faster networks and digital consumption,” said Lenovo in a statement.

Publication: Business Today 

Dell Technologies on Wednesday unveiled new business PCs. These latest variants are under the Latitude, Precision and OptiPlex portfolios. Latitude 9510 is available starting at $1,899 and Latitude 7410 and 7310 PCs are available from at $1,499. Dell Precision 5550 is available from $1,999 while Dell Precision 5750 is available in early June, starting at $2,399. The India pricing will be revealed at a later date.

Publication: The New Indian Express 

Dell Technologies on Wednesday unveiled new business PCs across Latitude, Precision and OptiPlex portfolios. Latitude 9510 is available starting at $1,899 and Latitude 7410 and 7310 PCs are available from at $1,499. Dell Precision 5550 is available from $1,999 while Dell Precision 5750 is available in early June, starting at $2,399. The India pricing will be revealed at a later date.

Publication: News18

Chip giant Intel sees the coronavirus outbreak as a temporary blip on the horizon, unlike the gloom and doom sentiment that has gripped large segments of industry because of the coronavirus pandemic. Intel Corporation plans to leverage new and emerging technologies such as 5G, artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain for sectors such as healthcare and education, Nivruti Rai, country head, Intel India, and vice-president, data platforms group, said in an interview.

Publication: Livemint

Qualcomm India said that it is providing a financial aid of $1.5 million to help tackle the spread of COVID-19. The contributions will be made towards PM CARES Fund, and multiple relief and public healthcare infrastructure initiatives. Efforts towards public health infrastructure includes improving the availability of COVID-19 testing kits, health screening, helping frontline warriors with sanitisation, providing PPEs, as well as relief work supporting feeding the needy and at-risk in various regions across India, said Qualcomm in a release.

Publication: ET Telecom 

Today, the gaming industry is flourishing with the emergence of a number of gaming consoles and platforms. What started with Gameboy and Nintendo a few decades back has now transformed into PS4, Xbox, etc. Along with this, the rise of a number of handheld consoles has also revolutionized how gamers perceive gaming.

Publication: The Times of India 

Technology behemoth Google is investing heavily in people and partnerships to grab a larger share of the Indian Cloud market, as it takes on global rivals Microsoft, IBM and Amazon Web Services in the country, a top company executive said. Google will also leverage its advantage as a ‘data company’ and deploy technology as the key differentiator with expertise in areas such as Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, said Karan Bajwa, the newly appointed managing director of Google Cloud in India.

Publication: ET Tech 

China’s Lenovo Group, the world’s biggest PC maker, posted a better than expected quarterly profit on Wednesday and said it could benefit from the “new normal” of working from home. Lenovo reported a 64% drop in net profit for its fourth quarter ended March to $43 million (35 million pounds) due to disruption cause by COVID-19, beating an average $7.49 million estimate of seven analysts, according to Refinitiv data. Revenue dropped 9.7% to $10.6 billion.

Publication: Forbes

Microsoft at its Build 2020 developer’s conference, hosted online, announced a new supercomputer in partnership with OpenAI. This supercomputer will be used to train extremely large artificial intelligence models and is hosted on Azure. “Compared with other machines listed on the TOP500 supercomputers in the world, it ranks in the top five,” claims Microsoft.

Publication: The Times of India 

Sangeeta Gupta, senior vice-president at industry body Nasscom, said no large firm had so far sought a waiver. “Our primary concern is to help SMEs and we are in discussion with government representatives to get relief for these startups and others in tier 2 locations.”

Publication: The Times of India 

Total streaming hours watched (in millions) and annual growth for each social platform. Twitch, YouTube gaming, Facebook Gaming, Mixer.

Publication: The Economic Times

Gargi Dasgupta, director of IBM Research India, and CTO of IBM India, says there was anxiety during the month of lockdown, on what’s happening around, how to manage schedules. But by the second month, each one in the family had found their rhythm.(Dell)

Publication: The Times of India 

Technology giant Google is investing heavily in people and partnerships to grab a larger share of the Indian Cloud market, as it takes on global rivals Microsoft, IBM and Amazon Web Services in the country, a top company executive said. Google will also leverage its advantage as a ‘data company’ and deploy technology as the key differentiator with expertise in areas such as Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, said Karan Bajwa, the newly appointed managing director of Google Cloud in India.

Publication: The Economic Times 

We’ve seen some preliminary benchmarks of Intel’s 10th Gen flagship, the Core i9-10900K and they mostly point to the say conclusion. Intel’s newest 14nm lineup will be slightly faster in gaming but AMD will still maintain dominance in content creation, productivity, and pretty much every other workload. That too while costing nearly $100 less than competing Comet Lake-S parts.

Publication: Hardware Times 

AMD’s Ryzen 3000 CPUs had a very smooth launch, with widespread acclaim from critics and fans alike. The chips offered never-before-seen levels of performance in the consumer market, making even Intel’s HEDT lineup obsolete. Not everything went according to plan, though. There was a discrepancy with respect to the boost clocks of the new processors.

Publication: Hardware Times 

Chinese smartphone maker Oppo said it has entered into a partnership agreement with telecom operator Vodafone and will now bring its smartphone portfolio to Vodafone’s European markets starting from May 2020. “The collaboration between the two companies will give consumers more choice and accelerate 5G adoption across Vodafone’s international markets,” commented the smartphone maker on the partnership.

Publication: ET Telecom 

Xiaomi may offer the laptops with AMD Ryzen 3000 series processors.  Xiaomi has a lot of plans for the Indian market in 2020 and despite COVID-19 wreaking havoc on businesses, the company isn’t in a mood to stop, at least anytime soon. After announcing the Mi 10 flagship along with several unique IoT products and accessories, Xiaomi is now looking to get in the laptop market.

Publication: India Today 

In essence, these improvements have resulted in an IPC increase of 18% (on average) with the 10th Gen Ice Lake chips. This has allowed Team Blue to retain its IPC lead over AMD, though with Zen 2 it’s nowhere as large as it used to be. Furthermore, poor yields mean that the Sunny Cove based Ice Lake chips are limited to quad-core designs.

Publication: Hardware Times 

This is a more level playground. Both the Pentium G5400 and the Athlon 3000G are capable sub-$100 chips, with the former, have a slightly superior single-threaded performance and the latter boasting significantly better graphics capabilities. There’s also the price to consider. AMD’s 3000G is $15 cheaper and the accompanying A320 motherboard is also dirt cheap. Intel’s G5400 is slightly pricier and the same is true for the rest of the system. Overall, I’d say that te Athlon 3000G is an excellent option for a makeshift or office system if you’re on a strict budget and can’t afford to get a discrete graphics card.

Publication: Hardware Times

Such virtualisation technology came about because software developers realised that powerful and pricey servers often ran far below full computing capacity. By slicing physical machines into smaller virtual ones, developers could cram more software on to them, similar to the puzzle game Tetris. Amazon, Microsoft and others built profitable cloud businesses out of wringing every bit of computing power from their hardware and selling that power to millions of customers. But the technology has been mostly limited to processor chips from Intel and similar chips such as those from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). Nvidia said Thursday that its new A100 chip can be split into seven “instances.”

Publication: Gadgets 360 

Extending its support to combat the COVID-19 situation in the country, Intel has embarked on a few key initiatives in India through collaboration with the technology ecosystem and engagements with local communities. These include working with the government, industry and academia on technology solutions to combat COVID-19, commitment of INR 5 crores towards key central and state government relief funds and research initiatives, and supporting affected communities through NGOs and employee volunteering efforts.

Publication: ETCIO

Last year’s cheapest APU offering by AMD was touted to be one of the best entry-level dual core APU which is unlocked this time. So, being priced at $49, this processor gives tremendous value for money performance and is based on the revolutionary AM4 socket.

AMD has announced the Radeon Pro VII workstation graphics card, optimized to power demanding broadcast workloads, complex CAE simulations, and HPC application development. AMD also released the new Radeon Pro Software for Enterprise 20.Q2 driver, as well as updates for Radeon ProRender. The AMD Radeon Pro VII workstation graphics card is built for broadcast and engineering professionals, delivering exceptional graphics and computational performance, as well as innovative features.

Publication: Daily Hunt 

The India traditional PC market has witnessed a 16.7 per cent year-over-year (YoY) decline in the first quarter of 2020 with a total of 1.8 million shipments, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker. The traditional PC market includes desktops, notebooks, and workstation. “This decline was registered across all product categories and can be attributed largely to the supply issues faced by the vendors due to Covid-19, which impacted the manufacturing and logistics arms of vendors in China,” the report said.

Publication: The Hindu BusinessLine 

An important roll out from AMD this year is the launch of its new partner-employee training program called AMD Arena. Vinay Sinha, MD, Sales, AMD India Private Limited shares the company’s channel strategies for 2020. What have been the key highlights of 2019 for the IT channel industry? 2019 was a growth year for the IT channel industry. The Government’s Digital India initiative led to improved and affordable broadband connectivity and deeper penetration of PCs across the country.

Publication: CRN

PC and laptop major Dell has announced a fresh XPS laptop series line-up, showcasing new XPS 15 and XPS 17 devices that come with virtually borderless and four-sided 16:10 edge-to-edge display while ditching legacy ports in favour of USB-C. XPS 15 starts at $1,299.99, available in the US and Canada now and will be available and in European and Asian countries throughout this week. XPS 17 begins at $1,499.99 and is available in the US, Canada and European and Asian countries this summer.

Publication: CRN

Many offices are already planning to make changes to adhere to social distancing norms and monitor employees using cameras with thermal sensors to ensure they are not carrying a fever. Homegrown artificial intelligence (AI) company Staqu said it already has 15 clients for its new video analytics software. It uses existing closed circuit television cameras and thermal cameras to determine whether social distancing is being maintained, monitor employee body temperature in real time, etc.

Publication: Mint

“More than 25 companies will participate in the remote internship selection process. They include Vmware, Mediatek, Infineon, Philips, Novartis, Volvo and Cerner. Other companies who were interested in visiting VIT for on-campus interviews will make a visit after the lockdown,” said V Samuel Rajkumar, director of placement and training, VIT. Publication: The Times of India 

Ten years ago, Netflix was a small streaming platform, relatively unknown in emerging markets, used only by movie “nerds”. Over the years, the platform has innovated its offerings and evolved consumer behavior to become the cultural norm across regions. A sector that is following the same trajectory is the gaming industry. Gaming giants are putting their weight behind innovation and rapidly expanding to become the ‘Netflix’ of Gaming.

Publication: CNBC TV 18 

Data has become the new currency now and when the new norm of the life will be push us more towards adoption of digital products, data will play crucial role in determining consumer behaviour and personalising the digital solution. The demand for the digital products will grow day by day and the responsibility of a product manager will also increase, which will push them to learn new skills and technology. I will keep on sharing my experience and learning with fellow product professionals to solve consumers problem in a better way.

Publication: HT Tech – Hindustan Times 

Companies are increasingly using automation to manage their supply chain and production functions to overcome difficulties on human intervention and supervision because of the prolonged lockdown. Routine jobs that require fewer human skills are already witnessing a takeover by machines, with artificial intelligence (AI), industrial robots, service robots and robotic process automation playing an increasingly active role, according to industry experts.

Publication: Livemint

The GPU Technology Conference is the most exciting event for the AI and ML ecosystem. From researchers in academia to product managers at hyperscale cloud companies to IoT builders and makers, this conference has something relevant for each of them. As an AIoT enthusiast and a maker, I eagerly look forward to GTC. Due to the current COVID-19 situation, I was a bit disappointed to see the event turning into a virtual conference.

Publication: Forbes

With many rumors and speculations about the RTX 3000 series, theories are also getting popular, one of them being the graphics architecture behind the lineup. Many leaked benchmarks and articles are claiming the exact specifications of the lineup. However, those claims cannot be trusted completely and should be taken with a grain of salt.

Publication: TechQuila

Intel has introduced its new 10th Gen Intel Core vPro processors, built to power the next generation of business computing innovation for the increasingly remote workforce. The new mobile and desktop PC processors deliver increased productivity improvements, connectivity, security features and remote manageability all to empower IT to deliver amazing experiences, helping employees stay connected, more productive, more secure and in the flow with minimal interruptions, the company said in a statement.

Publication: The Economic Times 

Chip giant Intel on Thursday introduced new 10th Gen Intel Core vPro processors for mobile and desktop PCs to enable seamless productivity and performance for the increasingly remote workforce. Systems powered by the latest Intel vPro chips provide integrated Wi-Fi 6 (Gig+) connectivity, which is the best Wi-Fi technology for video conferencing, delivering secure and minimal interruptions.

Publication: Telangana Today 

Dell has provided its Alienware Cryo-Tech cooling technology on the Alienware Area-51m R2 along with a vapor chamber and up to 12-phase HyperEfficient Voltage Regulation. The laptop also has AMD Radeon RX graphics option. Additionally, it has a redesigned Alienware keyboard that has a 1.7mm key travel, N-key rollover technology, and RGB LED lighting on each single key that’s customisable as well.

AMD has announced the AMD Radeon Pro VII workstation graphics card for broadcast and engineering professionals, delivering exceptional graphics and computational performance, as well as innovative features. The new graphics card is designed to power today’s most demanding broadcast and media projects, complex computer aided engineering (CAE) simulations and the development of high-performance computing (HPC) applications that enable scientific discovery on AMD-powered supercomputers.

AMD Renoir Ryzen 4000 for laptops has been pretty impressive so far in both 15W and 35W TDP tiers. We have been expecting Renoir to make its way to the desktop in a 65W TDP variant as well and looks like we might be seeing the first mentions of these processors in the wild. Igor’s Lab has managed to get hold of Ordering Part Numbers (OPNs) that offer quite a bit of information about the specs of the yet unannoucned Renoir desktop APUs.

Publication: Notebook Check 

Enterprise technology and compute devices manufacturer Dell Technologies has announced open source networking solutions for simplifying data centre operations and management. Called Enterprise SONiC Distribution, the platform removes complexities and creates an agile and flexible network by following an approach built on open standards, according to a statement. Data centre networking is gaining importance at a time when enterprises are increasingly moving to a hybrid cloud that calls for seamless networking between data centres.

Publication: TechCircle

Acer India has announced its ‘Back to School’ campaign for 2020. As part of this, customers can purchase an Acer laptop on zero down payment and EMI starting at Rs 1,666 per month. Acer is also offering customers 2 years of warranty and one-year accidental damage protection for free. Along with the above-mentioned benefits, the customers who purchase the laptop with 9th-generation Intel i5 processor will get a PUBG game worth Rs 4,500 free.

Publication: The Times of India 

Semiconductor firm Nvidia Corp on Thursday announced a new chip that can be digitally split up to run several different programs on one physical chip, a first for the company that matches a key capability on many of Intel Corp’s chips.  The notion behind what the Santa Clara, California-based company calls its A100 chip is simple: Help the owners of data centers get every bit of computing power possible out of the physical chips they purchase by ensuring the chip never sits idle.

Publication: Deccan Herald 

My favorite tweet on blockchain goes something like this: “Blockchain is the answer, now tell me the question?” Fuelled by the unceasing hype around Bitcoin and cryptocurrency, blockchain has been regarded as the silver bullet solution for everything—hacking, threats to democ- racy, poverty and world hunger. No wonder then, that the moment the CoVid outbreak became a pandemic with its ensuing lockdowns, blockchain started to be bandied about as the cure that could miraculously bring the world back up on its feet.

Publication: Mint

Asus India has garnered almost 50% of the average national volume in sales from just 100-odd stores in a week since the business started operating in zones as per government directive, said Arnold Su, its business head for consumer and gaming PC. Almost 65% of the demand is for gaming laptops and the rest for consumer notebooks, he told ET. Lenovo India MD Rahul Agarwal said there has been a short-term spike in online sales and demand from enterprises. (Snapdeal, Lenovo)

Publication: The Economic Times 

Igor Wallossek, formerly the lead-editor of TomsHardware Germany and now the face behind Igor’s Lab has leaked the specs of the Ryzen 4000 desktop APU lineup. While the shared details pertain to engineering samples, the final variants won’t be too different. As expected the Ryzen 4000 desktop APUs are going to include the same base specs as the mobile counterparts, they’ll still be faster thanks to higher clock speeds and overclocking potential.

Publication: Hardware Times 

AMD today launched the Radeon Pro VII graphics card for content creators and professionals, and along with it a bunch of related tools. The most important is the ProRender 2.0 which lets you employ both your Ryzen CPU and Radeon GPU to speed your rendering workloads. Earlier, ProRender was a GPU-only software. Now, it not only supports CPU+GPU rendering, but also allows multi-GPU systems to run at the maximum potential using the Infinity Fabric Link.

Publication: Hardware Times 

Graphics Processing Units (GPU) giant Nvidia seems to be gearing up for GPU Technology Conference (GTC) 2020. The company founder Jensen Huang is all set to deliver the keynote presentation on May 14, 2020. As part of the keynote address, Huang is likely to share details regarding the next generation of GPU series. Recent reports have indicated that Nvidia is looking at launching its GeForce RTX 3000 series at the launch event.

Publication: BGR India 

Technology companies have a key role to play in developing solutions for testing, treatment and containment of COVID-19, Intel India Country Head Nivruti Rai said. Intel India is working with India’s Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad (IIIT-H) to deploy Intel client and server solutions to help achieve faster and less expensive COVID-19 testing and coronavirus genome sequencing to understand epidemiology and AI-based risk stratification for patients with comorbidities.

Publication: Express Computers 

Until now, AMD was shy to use their new Ryzen CPUs on the Chromebooks, most of them were powered by lower tier AMD A-Series APUs or the Athlon APUs. There are costly Chromebooks in the market as well powered by the Intel CPUs, so it seems finally we will get to see a mid-range Chromebook powered by AMD Ryzen CPUs.

Publication: TechnoSports 

Chip-maker AMD on Wednesday announced the AMD Radeon Pro VII workstation graphics card for broadcast and engineering professionals. The new graphics card is expected to be available from major etailers/retailers beginning mid-June 2020 for $1,899, AMD said, adding that AMD Radeon Pro VII-equipped workstations are expected to be available in the second half of 2020 from leading original equipment manufacturer partners.

Publication: News D

Chip-maker AMD on Wednesday announced the AMD Radeon Pro VII workstation graphics card for broadcast and engineering professionals. The new graphics card is expected to be available from major etailers/retailers beginning mid-June 2020 for $1,899, AMD said, adding that AMD Radeon Pro VII-equipped workstations are expected to be available in the second half of 2020 from leading original equipment manufacturer partners.

Publication: Daily Hunt

Chip-maker AMD on Wednesday announced the AMD Radeon Pro VII workstation graphics card for broadcast and engineering professionals. The new graphics card is expected to be available from major etailers/retailers beginning mid-June 2020 for $1,899, AMD said, adding that AMD Radeon Pro VII-equipped workstations are expected to be available in the second half of 2020 from leading original equipment manufacturer partners.

Publication: News Karnataka 

Chip-maker AMD on Wednesday announced the AMD Radeon Pro VII workstation graphics card for broadcast and engineering professionals. The new graphics card is expected to be available from major etailers/retailers beginning mid-June 2020 for $1,899, AMD said, adding that AMD Radeon Pro VII-equipped workstations are expected to be available in the second half of 2020 from leading original equipment manufacturer partners.

Publication: Outlook

Chip-maker AMD on Wednesday announced the AMD Radeon Pro VII workstation graphics card for broadcast and engineering professionals. The new graphics card is expected to be available from major etailers/retailers beginning mid-June 2020 for $1,899, AMD said, adding that AMD Radeon Pro VII-equipped workstations are expected to be available in the second half of 2020 from leading original equipment manufacturer partners.

Publication: SME Times 

Dell Technologies is announcing Enterprise SONiC Distribution by Dell Technologies, a new set of fully supported open-source networking solutions that help enterprises modernize and simplify the operations and management of their data centers at scale. As organizations increasingly rely on modern hybrid cloud models to do business, the historically monolithic and proprietary approach to networking has created inefficiencies and unneeded complexity.

Publication: Analytics India Magazine 

Sony Corp expects operating profit to drop at least 30% this financial year to its lowest in four years as the company anticipates a hit to demand for its TVs, cameras and smartphone image sensors from the coronavirus outbreak. Sony has halted production at some plants and experienced supply-chain disruptions as governments around the world imposed lengthy restrictions on movement and business activity to contain the virus. Chief Financial Officer Hiroki Totoki said the consumer electronics business such as TVs “has been hardest hit right now, but the impact will expand to other businesses as well.”

Publication: Business Today 

Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. has decided to defer the joining dates of all campus recruits from India to the second half of 2020, but has assured the students that it will honor all the offers made. “We remain committed to growth and plan to honor the more than 20,000 campus offers we have made. The timing of our trainees’ start date in India will be deferred to Q3 (July-September).

Publication: Mint

PC shipments in India dropped nearly 17% to 1.8 million units in Q1 on supply is- sues, according to the IDC Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker. Shipment of traditional devices – including desktops, notebooks and workstations — declined despite demand from enterprises and others. The fall was mainly due to supply issues faced by vendors due to the lockdown.

Publication: The Economic Times 

HP retained the top position in the overall PC market with a share of 28.2 per cent in the January-March quarter, followed by Dell Technologies (25.9 per cent) and Lenovo (20 per cent). Jaipal Singh, associate research manager (client devices) at IDC India, said there has been a huge uptake in learning and working from home in India during the countrywide shutdown as “students, parents, working executives, and companies come to terms with the new reality during this period”.

Publication: Millennium Post 

Lenovo is launching a new 2-in-1 called the Duet Chromebook that brings the prowess of lightweight Chrome OS for light to medium users. The Duet Chromebook is powered by a MediaTek processor and comes at an affordable price of $279 (roughly Rs 21,000). Chromebooks from other OEMs are mostly available at higher costs. The recently launched Samsung Galaxy Chromebook bears a price tag of $999 (roughly Rs 75,000).

Publication: India Today 

Google Cloud has announced the appointment of former Microsoft executive Anil Bhansali as Vice President of Engineering. In his new role, Bhansali will coordinate all software development support efforts for Google Cloud in India. Bhansali joins Google Cloud from Microsoft where he was Corporate Vice President of their Azure cloud division and site leader for their R&D team in India.

Publication: Express Computers 

Lenovo launched a new ThinkBook, which comes with new technologies that take flexibility and collaboration to a whole new level. Given the current Covid-19 scenario, modern workers need a streamlined laptop they can use to collaborate from any remote location. Backed by customer research, ThinkBook is specially designed for SMBs buying laptops for perceived design and price advantages, but also miss out on business grade features and security in the process.

Publication: The Hans India 

Extending its support to combat the COVID-19 situation in the country, Intel has embarked on a few key initiatives in India through collaboration with the technology ecosystem and engagements with local communities. These include working with the government, industry and academia on technology solutions to combat COVID-19, commitment of INR 5 crores towards key central and state government relief funds and research initiatives, and supporting affected communities through NGOs and employee volunteering efforts.

Publication: CRN India 

US-based semiconductor manufacturing company Intel has partnered with the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania to co-develop technology that enables to train artificial intelligence (AI) models that identify brain tumors. A federation of 29 international healthcare and research institutions led by Penn Medicine will be working together to develop such tools using a privacy-preserving technique called federated learning.

Publication: Gadgets Now 

Companies pursuing autonomous vehicle technology have often sought the involvement of those experts in a certain aspect of it. Intel Corp. is the latest example of that, as it has acquired Moovit, an Israel-based mobility service provider and journey planner app, for a whopping $900 million (~Rs 6791 crore).

Publication: India Times

Last December, Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon 765 and 765G chipsets as the first in the company’s lineup to feature an integrated 5G modem. The Snapdragon 765 series chipsets have become the standard for a new generation of 5G premium mid-range smartphones. Now, the semiconductor manufacturer has unveiled an overclocked version called Snapdragon 768G.

Publication: Moneycontrol

Security researcher Björn Ruytenberg has found a flaw in the security protocols of Intel’s Thunderbolt ports for laptops, which can allow an attacker to bypass login screens of a Windows or Linux-based computer. The Thunderbolt port is found in millions of laptops and PCs worldwide and allows fast data transfer speeds from external devices. The researcher is calling the attack Thunderspy.

Publication: Livemint

Intel and a Taiwanese company are talking to the Trump administration about building new semiconductor plants in the United States amid concern about relying on suppliers in Asia for chips used in a wide variety of electronics. A spokesman for Intel, the biggest American chip maker, said Sunday that the company is in discussions with the Defense Department about improving domestic technology sources. Spokesman William Moss said Santa Clara, California-based Intel is well-positioned to work with the government “to operate a U.S.-owned commercial foundry.”

Publication: Deccan Chronicle 

The US officials are reportedly in talks with Intel and TSMC about setting up the production of chipsets in the country itself. The US-based tech brands have been working towards reducing the dependence on Asia for years and this has only become more intense ever since. With a pandemic disrupting the trade and manufacturing cycles and sour US-China trade scenarios, reducing dependence sounds like a good plan for the US. Also Read – Samsung Galaxy A21s new render leak shows punch-hole camera design

Publication: BGR India 

One potential stumbling block here is the price. These are what appear to be eight-core parts, which means CPU performance in the same ballpark as the high-end Ryzen 7 3700X. APUs have traditionally catered to the value/budget market, offering a good combination of CPU and GPU power to rationalize costs. If, however, this APU ends up costing over US$200, you might be better served picking up a Ryzen 3 3100 and a good budget GPU like the RX 590 or RX 580 (stock of which still sells in the US$150 range).

Publication: Hardware Times 

Facebook has decided to let most of its employees to stay at home and work at least till the end of this year. The tech giant, however, plans to reopen offices in July this year. According to a report by CNBC, the company will be reopening its offices from July 6. However, the number of employees will be limited to those absolutely neccesary.

Publication: Livemint

AMD has officially launched two new entry-level gaming-centric CPUs — the AMD Ryzen 3 3100 and the Ryzen 3 3300X. These are four-core eight-thread processors based on the Zen-2 architecture, which makes them more power efficient when compared to the competition. The AMD Ryzen 3 3100 retails for Rs. 7,290 (plus GST) and the Ryzen 3 3300X sells for Rs. 9,490 (plus GST) and will be available via resellers across the country by mid-May.

Publication: Gizbot

Microsoft has released some of the first third-party games that will be coming to the Xbox Series X. A total of 13 titles developed by third-party game titles, ranging from racing to shooting, coming to Microsoft’s next-generation console this fall. The list of titles includes Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Madden NFL 21, Yakuza: Like a Dragon, among others.

Publication: Indian Express

Nivruti Rai, country head, Intel India and lead, Nasscom Task Force, said, “We are delighted to provide the first of its kind COVID tracking platform and Dashboard to the Government of Telangana and will continue our work led by tech, developing solutions to fight this global crisis. We thank the government for their continued support and trusting the Nasscom Task Force for delivering this project”.

The budget Ryzen 3 CPUs based on AMD’s revolutionary Zen 2 architecture finally makes its way to the Indian market. Both the Ryzen 3 3100 and 3300X has disrupted the tech world with its exceptional performance at such cheap price.  Both the CPUs have started to be available across the globe from this month and now you can get one for yours in India as well.

Publication: TechnoSports

Experts say the economic down- turn caused by Covid-19 in developed markets and the focus on technology would mean that the- re will be more work outsourced to countries such as India. “This situation will push many customers to look at outsourcing. It may not necessarily be offshoring, but they might want to do outsourcing to keep their costs variable. So, some sectors which were not looking at outsourcing will definitely be looking, at this point in time,” HCL Tech CEO C Vijayakumar told ET last week. (INTEL, HCL)

Publication: The Economic Times 

For Taiwanese chipmaker MediaTek, gaming is one of the key focus areas. During the ongoing lockdown period in India the number of gamers and time spent on games on smartphones has increased dramatically.

Publication: The Economic Times 

Microsoft’s Surface Laptop 3 was launched last year in October and since then, a few users have reported cracks on the laptop screen for “no discernible reason”. After complaints started rolling in, Microsoft initially said that is was “investigating” the issue in February this year, and now they have explained a possible cause for these cracks and have offered free repairs.

Publication: Hindustan Times 

Electronics firm Asus has launched a new campaign #LikeMotherLikeAsus to celebrate the consistent productivity of mothers while also handling various tasks simultaneously. Conceptualised by Dentsu Webchutney, the campaign highlights how the brand takes its inspiration from mothers around the world and seeks to incorporate their expertise into the offerings of the brand.

Publication: Financial Express 

According to a recent survey by Gartner, as of March 2020, 55 percent of tech CEOs had not begun preparing for an economic downturn. With technology companies globally now facing the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, measuring cash burn rate over time can help tech CEOs calculate a company’s financial runway and assess its ability to survive the current recession.

Publication: IT News Online

Information Technology spending this year will likely fall as organisations trim investments in technology in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic-led slowdown, analysts said.

Publication: The Economic Times

WHILE MILLIONS OF people around the world are now working remotely due to the lockdown, are they sure they are doing so safely and securely It’s an essential business question to ask at the best times. But it is even more so now a days. These days, our inboxes,mobile alerts and news updates are all about Covid-19, all the time. It’s over- whelming and attackers know it.(security,Microsoft’s intelligence)

Publication: Financial Express

With Covid-19 landing employees in a dilemma regarding their jobs and careers, many companies are closely monitoring the situation and engaging with the government and medical authorities to ensure a safe working environment. Taiwanese PC maker Acer considers employee experience as a top priority, especially in these trying times. The company is continuously working on strategies to manage and retain its people and has come up with a slew of measures to enhance its employee experience.

Publication: CXO Today

The first quarter of 2020 saw most economies struggling to keep it together amid the COVID-19 pandemic. However, no everyone was among the losers. Many companies especially those behind online cloud-based entertainment and certain chipmakers had their best quarters yet. The biggest winner is without a doubt TSMC whose sales grew by a massive 45% YoY.

Publication: Hardware Times 

According to a Digitimes report, NVIDIA will be launching its Hopper graphics cards based on TSMC’s 5nm process just a year after Ampere (in 2021). While it’s too early to be sure of anything, this can be seen as an attempt to tackle AMD’s return to the high-end graphics card market. The upcoming PS5 and Xbox Series X consoles will both be based on the RDNA 2 design and like the Navi 2x GPUs will include hardware-level ray-tracing support.

Publication: Hardware Times 

This basically means that the 10900K should be able to compete with AMD’s Ryzen 9 3900X across a diverse range of workloads while finishing well ahead in gaming. The review embargo for Intel’s 10th Gen desktop processors lifts by the third week of May. Only then will we be able to get a definitive idea of where the new Blue chips stand compared to AMD’s Zen 2 offerings.

Publication: Hardware Times 

Enough with the Galaxy smartphones, it’s time for the Galaxy laptops to take over. And surprisingly, they bring some new features with them. After announcing them earlier, Samsung has finally launched the Galaxy Book Flex along with the Flex Alpha and Ion laptops in the US. So let’s take a quick look at what they bring to the table. As the name implies, the Flex features a rather minimalist 2-in-1 design that is both practical and lightweight.

Publication: Stuff India 

Asus has extended its ROG Showdown esport tournament for two weeks and it will now end on May 17. The tournament was launched in collaboration with Intel on April 3. The extended weeks will include two games — Rainbow Six Siege and Counter Strike: GO. The registration for both the games has already started and the Rainbow Six Siege tournament will start from May 8 and will end on May 10, while players interested in Counter Strike: Go can play it between May 15 to May 17.

Publication: The Times of India 

Microsoft Surface Book 3 is the latest powerhouse device to join the Surface family. Microsoft has announced the new Surface Book model can offer better performance, store more content, and last for even longer over the predecessor. There are significant bumps in the specifications but the design of the Surface Book 3 is more or less similar to the Surface Book 2. Microsoft is packing 10th-generation Intel Core processors, along with up to Nvidia Quadro RTX 3000 graphics card on the top model.

Publication: India Today  

The demand for laptops went through the roof in the past two months as thousands of companies scrambled to make workfrom-home arrangements for lakhs of employees. Many wanted to buy PCs, many more wanted to rent. And there just weren’t enough available. Companies that already had most of their workforces on laptops transitioned work to homes far more easily that those with many desktops. The latter involved logistical challenges of transporting the monitor, CPU, USB, along with the wires. It took time. Extra workforces were needed to transport and then set up the systems in employees homes.

Publication: The Times of India

In terms of raw performance, NVIDIA’s RTX 20 series or the Turing architecture offers a relatively smaller performance boost over the preceding GTX 10-series Pascal cards. Instead, most of NVIDIA’s R&D and marketing budget for Turing went into implementing ray-tracing, otherwise known as RTX with a focus on AI-based upscaling, DLSS.

Publication: Hardware Times 

Graphics giant Nvidia has announced plans to acquire data centre networking specialist Cumulus Networks. The acquisition of Cumulus, which is headquartered in Mountain View, California, will bolster Nvidia’s networking software capabilities, the company said on Monday. The two companies did not disclose the transaction details.

Publication: Hindustan Times 

IBM today at its Think Digital conference announced new services and solutions backed by a broad ecosystem of partners to help enterprises and telecommunications companies speed their transition to edge computing in the 5G era. This effort combines IBM’s experience and expertise in multicloud environments with Red Hat’s industry-leading open source technology, which became part of IBM last year in one of the biggest tech acquisitions of all time.

Publication: Express Computers

MSI, one of the world’s leading brands in gaming laptops has announced its new MEG Trident X 10th and Codex R Gaming PCs based on Intel’s 10th Gen CPUs. The company has worked on minimizing the volume and footprint of the desktop. Gamers who want small-form-factor desktops are in luck.

Publication: TechQuila

Debuting a new Omen look and feel, HP has unveiled the Omen 25L and 30L desktops and the Omen 27i Gaming Monitor. Both desktops perfectly pair with the latest Omen 27i Gaming Monitor, says the company. Omen 25L desktop is expected to be available May 5 via HP.com at a starting price of $899.99.

Publication: The Times of India 

AMD will launch its Zen 3 based Epyc Milan CPUs before the end of 2020, as per the marketing slides from the company’s Financial Analyst Day (5th May 2020). This is something Dr. Lisa Su (CEO and President, AMD) has already confirmed multiple times. However, at the same time, there was not a single mention of the Ryzen 4000 “Vermeer” desktop CPUs in any of the slides.

Publication: Hardware Times 

AMD’s CPU clock scaling algorithm, Precision Boost 2 was introduced with the 2nd Gen Ryzen processors and an additional feature, Precision Boost Overdrive was introduced with present Gen Ryzen 3000 chips. There’s been a lot of confusion regarding these two boosting algorithms and the addition of AutoOC (often found in the same BIOS section as Precision Boost) makes the whole affair even more complicated.

Publication: Hardware Times 

In an effort to aid the coronavirus effort, NVIDIA has come up with its own design for a low-cost ventilator that can be assembled in just 5 minutes. Bill Dally, the Chief Scientist at NVIDIA, has developed an open-source design for a mechanical ventilator that can be easily assembled using off-the-shelf parts that cost about $400 (about INR 30,300).

Publication: Mashable India 

Intel announced its 10th Gen Core S-series desktop processors, claiming to be the fastest desktop gaming processor in the world. The flagship Intel Core i9-10900K CPU touches speeds up to a maximum of 5.3GHz with Intel Thermal Velocity Boost right out of the box. The processor features up to 10 cores, 20 threads and DDR4-2933MHz RAM speeds, and claims up to 187fps gaming performances.

Publication: Stuff

Chipmaker Intel Corp has bought Israeli public transit app maker Moovit for about $900 million to help it develop self-driving “robotaxis” that could take to the streets in early 2022, the company said on Monday. Moovit will remain independent while its technology and the data it collects from more than 800 million users in 102 countries will be integrated into Intel’s Israel-based autonomous car unit Mobileye.

Publication: Business Standard 

AMD POWERED ASUS ROG ZEPHYRUS G14 INDIA LAUNCH: We started our conversation with Arnold asking about the much-awaited Zephyrus G14. Turns out, had the lockdown not occurred, the laptop would have already been launched in the country. Not only the Zephyrus G14, but even the TUF A15 and A17, two other gaming laptops powered by AMD’s Renoir based CPUs. Arnold confirmed to us that the company would have launched the laptops in the Indian market.

Publication: Digit

AMD’s Q1 2020 earnings report points to substantial growth on the back of Ryzen 3000 CPU sales. AMD recorded a phenomenal 40 percent year on year increase in revenue between Q1 2020 and Q1 2019. Additionally, Team Red’s earnings per share increased by nearly 15 times over this same period, good news for anyone who bought AMD shares over the last year.

Publication: Hardware Times 

Riding on the back of excellent sales figures for Ryzen 3000 processors like the Ryzen 5 3600 and Ryzen 7 3700X, AMD recorded a mammoth 1300 percent increase in earnings per share between Q1 2019 and Q1 2020. Savvy buyers who held onto AMD shares have seen their portfolios increase in value by as much as 14 times. AMD’s Q1 2020 financial report indicates that the company generated US$1.79 billion in revenue with a net income of US$162 million. This is actually slightly down from Q4 2019 when the company recorded revenue figures it hadn’t seen in over a decade.

Publication: Notebook Check 

Global technology giants Amazon Inc, Microsoft and Google continued to witness strong growth in the cloud infrastructure market during January-March as more and more establishments turned to remote access to work in the backdrop of covid-19 induced lockdowns. Cloud infrastructure services spend hit yet another record in Q1 2020, growing 34% (YoY) to $31 billion. Growth in cloud services was driven by organisations around the world moving to remote working as the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

Publication: Livemint

Acer Swift 5 is equipped with 10th Gen Intel Core i7 processor and NVIDIA GeForce MX350. It runs on Windows 10 and packs a 16GB LPDDR3 RAM. The processor is an absolute powerhouse thanks to its quad-core design, and the flashy new Iris Plus inte- grated graphics. The quad-core CPU by Intel delivers solid per- formance.

Publication: The Economic Times 

As lockdown orders force billions of people to work, learn and play from home during the novel coronavirus outbreak, usage has surged for the cloud computing services that power video conferencing, streaming television and online games. The world’s three leading cloud services providers – Amazon’s Amazon Web Services, Microsoft’s Azure and Alphabet’s Google Cloud – have all seen demand for their services jump.

Publication: ET Tech

Intel announced its 10th Gen H series mobile processors for the next generation of gaming laptops at the start of April. Several processors in Intel’s H series offered boost clock speeds upwards on 5.0 GHz. Now, the semiconductor chip manufacturer just dropped its 10th Gen powerhouses for desktops in what is its biggest unveiling of the year.

Publication: Moneycontrol

Intel is expanding its processor lineup with the 10th-generation CPUs that are touted to be the “world’s fastest gaming processor.” The chipmaker has announced the launch of the 10th-generation Comet Lake processor series include Pentium, Celeron, Core i3, Core i5, Core i7, and Core i9 variants, which are total 32 in number. The top-end processor variant has 10 cores and can offer a turbo clock speed of 5.3GHz.

Publication: India Today

AMD has announced that 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processors are powering the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Compute E3 platform, bringing a new level of high-performance computing to Oracle Cloud. Using the AMD EPYC 7742 processor, the Oracle Cloud “E3 standard” and the bare metal compute instances are available today and leverage key features of the 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processors including robust memory bandwidth and the highest core count for an x86 data center processor.

Publication: CRN

After the latest controversy with their Exynos 990, Samsung finally has something to cheer about. Samsung had already forged a partnership with AMD way back in 2019 to use their Radeon GPUs on their SoCs. But there was radio silence since that announcement until now as we have learned new details about AMD’s new offering. It seems to be lining up quite well with their original plans of a 2021 launch date with this leak.

Publication: TechQuila

Samsung’s in-house Exynos chips have been at the receiving end of a lot of flak, primarily due to their lackluster performance compared to equally-powered Qualcomm offerings. The company’s SoC division is in dire straits, and is even considering a refresh for its Exynos 990. Although nothing meaningful has come out of Samsung’s partnership with AMD, that is set to change next year. And it just might be the shot in the arm Samsung needs to get back in the game.

Publication: Notebook Check 

AMD and Oxide Games today announced a multi-year partnership to co-develop graphics technologies for the growing cloud gaming market. By combining leadership gaming hardware and graphics expertise from AMD with Oxide’s proven development capabilities and innovative Nitrous game engine, the companies plan to create a robust set of tools and technologies for cloud rendering designed from the ground up to embrace the real-time demands of cloud-based gaming.

Publication: TechQuila

Dell Technologies sees plenty of opportunities in digital transformation even as technology spending has declined globally due to the impact of covid-19 pandemic. “In FY21, our focus on digital transformation will be more relevant than ever, especially in sectors like healthcare, online collaboration, education, telecommunication and digital cities,” Alok Ohrie, president & managing director, Dell Technologies India told Mint.

Publication: Livemint

Microsoft had already announced that all of its event till July would be digital-only. However, it seems like the company is going a step further and making its Build developer conference free for anyone to attend. Those interested in attending the two-day conference can register for the event here. Scott Hanselman, Principal Program Manager for Microsoft made the announcement on the company’s official blog.

Publication: Digit

Dell XPS 15 9500 and XPS 17 9700 laptops got accidentally listed on its official website prior to its official launch. The official Dell France website listing revealed all the specifications of both the devices. The listing has not been removed after a short period of time but somehow Notebookcheck was able to gather all the information. In terms of design, the Dell laptops will be featuring thin bezels and are lighter in weight than its predecessors.

Publication: Gadget Bridge 

AMD and Oxide Games have announced a multi-year partnership to co-develop graphics technologies for the growing cloud gaming market. By combining gaming hardware and graphics expertise from AMD with Oxide’s development capabilities and Nitrous game engine, the companies plan to create a robust set of tools and technologies for cloud rendering designed from the ground up to embrace the real-time demands of cloud-based gaming.

Publication: IT News Online

Software services exporters, including Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, Cognizant, Wipro, HCL Tech and Tech Mahindra, have predominantly moved Indian engineers onsite to debug technology issues or to co-innovate. In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic however, more work-from-home clauses are likely to disrupt the current service delivery model.

Publication: The Economic Times 

Covid-19 and the resultant impact on the economy have necessitated growth oriented organisations to rethink their business offerings, processes and business models. Business leaders are engrossed with the thinking around how to rejuvenate their businesses using lean principles with an eye on preserving their cash. HR leaders are therefore required to support their business leaders in purposeful ways which would enable the businesses to continue to function while the changes are being introduced.

Publication: The Financial Express 

Chipmaker Intel Corp is in advanced talks to acquire Israeli public transit app developer Moovit for $1 billion, financial news website Calcalist reported on Sunday. Moovit has raised $133 million from investors including Intel, BMW iVentures and Sequoia Capital.

Publication: Reuters

We are at a point where AMD can be hyper-competitive even in the mobile space. This bears true with this Ryzen 5 beating out an Intel i7, which is a tier higher. In other words, AMD’s new Ryzen 5 4600HS one-ups the Intel i7-10750H in the benchmark scores. The new Renoir APUs have injected the much-needed boost to AMDs Arsenal to tackle Intel’s dominance with mobile CPUs. For instance, the i7 has been the defacto choice for gaming laptops for many generations now even though Ryzen CPUs exist.

Publication: TechQuila

Since the lockdown was implemented in India on 25 March, work from home has been the sole option for employees. Asus India is planning to tap in to this surge in demand by launching new laptops in India once the lockdown is lifted. According to a top company executive in an interview to IANS, Asus is preparing a couple of launches in June this year. On Monday, the government will be allowing few districts in the country to start selling non-essential items that also includes laptops and smartphones.

Publication: Livemint

Despite the disruptions owing to the COVID-19 pandemic on global supply chain, Taiwanese electronics major ASUS expects a surge in demand for laptops in India once the lockdown is lifted, even as the company prepares for a couple of launches in June this year, a top company executive has said. Due to the nation-wide lockdown that started on March 25, IT hardware production distribution had largely remained shut in India, impacting sales revenue in April.

Publication: Livemint