At a time when many are struggling or closing shop, the newly-minted US$2 trillion Apple will be opening its third store in Singapore — right on the edge of the water near the iconic Marina Bay Sands (MBS).
Category: Desktop
Microsoft sounds death knell for Internet Explorer
It’s the end of the road for Internet Explorer (IE). Once the king of browsers that reigned in nearly 95 percent of PCs, it will be phased out by 2021.
Working from home doubles enterprise notebook sale in India in Q2
Photo by Marvin Meyer on Unsplash
India’s country-wide lockdown drove everyone to work from home. While this does not augur well for the economy, the move drove sales of enterprise notebooks up by a record 105.5 percent in Q2, according to IDC.
Zoom launches DTEN Me collaboration device
Following its phenomenal popularity, Zoom has created Zoom for Home, a new category to support people working remotely. The first product is the DTEN Me, a 27-inch an all-in-one personal collaboration device that comes with three built-in wide-angle cameras, an eight-microphone array and an ultra-responsive touch display for interactive screen sharing.
PC market buoyed by pandemic in Q2
Photo by August de Richelieu from Pexels
In a surprising, yet not so surprising turn, the global PC market grew in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic in Q2, when many countries went into various degrees of lockdown.
SiPearl aims to be the third party
For the longest time, the CPU market has been predominantly about two players — AMD and Intel. While there are others, they are way behind the Big Two. But French company SiPearl seems to be making a play to be the third party with the signing of a major licensing agreement with Arm.
NVIDIA CEO to deliver GTC 2020 keynote on May 14
Huang to make announcements in keynote address.If things had gone as originally planned, NVIDIA’s GPU Technology Conference (GTC) would have been done and dusted by now. But the coronavirus has forced the conference to go digital with NVIDIA Founder and Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang set to deliver his keynote address on May 14, 9pm (Singapore time).
Zoom hits security and privacy bumps
Among the few sparkles of hope in this period is Zoom whose video conferencing solution has become famous almost overnight. With movement and gathering restrictions in place in many parts of the world, Zoom has become a tool that many have turned to to stay connected and keep operations running.
Zendesk extends helping hand to charities and startups
In response to the impact of COVID-19 on charities, Zendesk is offering free software and support to help them manage volunteering, relief efforts and home assistance.
Adobe offers free Creative Cloud tools to students till end May
Source: AdobeAs schools shut temporarily because of the coronavirus pandemic, students have to turn to online or distance learning. Adobe is lending a helping hand by offering free access to Adobe Creative Cloud desktop apps for students till May 31.
Micosoft shutters all stores globally
Microsoft has announced the closure of all its stores across the global with immediate effect due to COVID-19 health concern.
Slido launches education version
The cancellation of SXSW EDU in Austin due to the COVID-19 outbreak may have affected its launch but Slido did not want to let the introduction of Slido for Education slide. Instead of a physical launch, it has announced online Slide Education, which aims to help lecturers stay connected with their students by powering two-way interaction during live and virtual classes.
Microsoft plots hijack of Google search engine for Office 365 users
Netscape used to be the king of browsers in the 1990s until Microsoft came along and bundled Internet Explorer from Windows 95. This swayed many PC users to the Microsoft browser and marked the demise of Netscape.
End of Windows 7
Today marks the end of Windows 7. Microsoft is stopping support and updates for this highly-popular operating system.
Private equity firm acquires Corel
Hands up if you’ve not heard of Corel before. Does the company sound vaguely familiar? Founded in the 1980s, this is a company that is well past its glory days. Corel used to be a well-known brand in the PC era with products such as Corel Draw and WinZip.
India PC market slides in Q1
Weak consumer demand, high inventory from previous quarters, and supply issues for Intel chips are among the reasons why the India PC market slipped in Q1. According to IDC, the segment dropped 8.3 percent to 2.15 million units that quarter.
AMD CEO to deliver Computex 2019 keynote
This year’s Computex in Taipei will kick off with a keynote address by AMD President and CEO Lisa Su at the Computex International Press Conference on May 27 at 10am.
Finally, an affordable ray tracing GPU from NVIDIA!
When NVIDIA launched on last August the first GeForce RTX GPUs with ray tracing capabilities, fans were excited but taken aback by the the price tag. Costing from US$499, the three cards — the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, 2080 and 2070 — were a little higher than most gamers were prepared to fork out.
NVIDIA unleashes powerful ‘T-Rex’ GPU
It’s no dinosaur but the newly-announced NVIDIA Titan RTX, dubbed T-Rex, is certainly very powerful — to the tune of 130 teraflops of deep learning performance and 11 GigaRays of ray-tracing performance.
Newstead goes into liquidation
Singapore IT retailer Newstead Technlogies has gone into liquidation. Established in 1998 with its first outlet at Funan DigitalLife Mall, it was supposed to be the anchor tenant when the redeveloped mall re-opens next year.
NVIDIA CEO teases at GeForce RTX announcement
It has been two years since NVIDIA’s last major announcement at the gaming front. And NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang decided that the thousands of audience at the auditorium in Cologne and nearly a quarter million who were catching the keynote presentation on Twitch could wait a little longer.
NVIDIA and RED Digital Cinema ease 8K bottleneck
8K is the new benchmark for professional videos captured by state-of-the-art cameras but delivering that standard for editing was not quite possible until NVIDIA’s announcement this week at SIGGRAPH of the Turing architecture and the new Quadro RTX GPUs.
NVIDIA unveils Turing architecture and new Quadro products
To the uninitiated, images just look look sharper and more detailed because of improved resolution. But, there’s much more to that, one of which is ray tracing, a rendering technique used to generate an image by tracing the path of light as pixels in an image plane and simulating the effects of its encounters with virtual objects.
Google Calendar: Yes, no, maybe, or reschedule
When a user gets a meeting invitation, the options are “Yes”, “No” or “Maybe”. Google has gone one up by adding “Propose a new time”, which lets users reschedule a meeting on Google Calendar.
Chrome marks http as “not secure”
HTTP has been synonymous with an entire generation of Internet users but what many are unaware is that the protocol is not secured. Anyone with the right skills can change the contents of the site before it reaches the person browsing. To combat this, Google is marking all HTTPsites as “not secure” from today so users are more aware of the sites’ security status.
EU fines Google 4.3b euro
However you look at it, the amount is massive! The European Union (EU) has slapped Google with a 4.3 billion euro fine for blocking its rivals from Android.
Consortium introduces standard to simplify VR headset connectivity
NVIDIA, Oculus, Valve, AMD, and Microsoft have come together to introduce VirtualLink, an open standard that simplifies next-generation virtual reality (VR) headset connectivity to PCs and other devices. Instead of a range of cords and connectors, the new standard adopts the single, high-bandwidth USB Type-C connector.
Google faces massive fine over Android
It happened to Microsoft in 2013 and it looks like history is repeating itself, albeit with Google being the one under the spotlight. The European Union (EU) is expected to decide on a record fine for forcing Android smartphone makers to pre-install its search and web browsing tools and use them by default unless they want to lose access to the Play Store.
PC market inches up 2.7% in Q2
Global traditional PC shipment posted the strongest growth in more than six years during the past quarter, according to IDC. Total shipment was 62.3 million units, which translates to a 2.7 percent year-on-year growth.
To Dell and back
Dell Technologies is making a comeback on the New York Stock Exchange. The PC giant went private in 2013 as part of a transition strategy in the midst of changes in the industry brought about by mobile and cloud computing.
Computex dishes out 35 Best Choice Awards
As a prelude to Computex Taipei next week, co-organiser Taipei Computer Association (TCA) has announced 35 winners of the 17th Best Choice Award (BC Award).
Yahoo fined US$35m for security breach
Yahoo, now part of Altaba, has been fined US$35 million for failing to disclose a 2014 security breach.
Gaming and VR focus at Computex
With the global gaming market expected to touch US$128.5 billion in 2020, this year’s Computex will have gaming and virtual reality (VR) as a focus area, alongside artificial intelligence (AI), 5G, blockchain, Internet of Things, and innovations and startups.
APAC PC shipment down 3.9% from Q1
The downward trend continues for worldwide PC shipment with a 1.4 percent drop in Q1, making it the 14th consecutive quarter of decline, according to Gartner.
Ivacy releases Firefox extension
Singapore-based Ivacy VPN has released an extension for the Firefox browser with essentially the same features as its offering for Google Chrome.
It’s a GAG!
NVIDIA pulled a fast one on the media with the announcement of the GeForce Academy of Gaming over the weekend.
Leadtek introduces new entry-level workstation GPU
Leadtek has released NVIDIA Quadro P620, an entry level professional GPU that gives designers an expansive visual workspace to view all creations in stunning detail.
NVIDIA DGX-2: Insanely powerful
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang (above) dubbed it the “world’s biggest GPU”. And he certainly wasn’t kidding as the NVIDIA DGX-2 is a massive 350-pounder that delivers an amazing two petaflops of computational power.
GTC hits new highs
The GPU Technology Conference (GTC) has hit new highs with a record of more than 8,000 participants, and filling the entire San Jose McEnery Convention Center.
Broadcom’s takeover bid of Qualcomm takes broadside hit
Singapore-based Broadcom has been dealt a major blow in its takeover bid of Qualcomm. US president Donald Trump has issued an order against the US$117 billion deal.
Samsung to make cryptocurrency mining chip
Cryptocurrency mining has been given a boost with the revelation that Samsung is working on chip just for that purpose.
Global IT spending to rise to US$3.7t in 2018
Global IT spending is expected to grow to US$3.7 trillion in 2018, an increase of 4.5 percent from 2017, according to Gartner.
Spectre of a Meltdown
In a week where the world’s eyes were supposed to be focusing on the exciting new gadgets and technologies coming out at CES 2018, it was news from past technologies that had the world reeling.
Apple caught slowing down
The names Benjamin Lazarus, Jeffrey Aberman, Stephen Margolis, Sandy Brodsky, and Victoria Childs are probably unfamiliar to most. But inthe days to come, they may become more popular.
NVIDIA Titan V: Not for gamers
It’s easy to understand why the media and gamers were getting all excited following NVIDIA’s announcement of the Titan V. After all, it’s dubbed as “the world’s most powerful GPU for the PC, driven by the world’s most advanced GPU architecture, NVIDIA Volta”.
NVIDIA Tesla V100 gains widespread acceptance
NVIDIA’s Volta architecture is leaving quite an impression. According to a NVIDIA press release issued at SC17, the Volta-based NVIDIA Tesla V100 GPU is available through every major computer maker and chosen by every major cloud to deliver artificial intelligence (AI) and high performance computing.
GeForce GTX 1070 Ti arrives on November 2
No matter how hard NVIDIA tries to keep things quiet, it always seems that some sites out there know something about unannounced products. Case in point is the much touted GeForce GTX 1070 Ti.
Media frenzy was already high in the weeks running up to the announcement, thanks to drips of information that were permeating the Web.
NVIDIA finally announced it hours ago in a blog post. Truth be told, it sounds like a good product with its award-winning Pascal GPU architecture, 2,432 cores and 8GB of memory running at 8Gbps for a total bandwidth of 256 GB/s. And it performs twice as fast as the immensely popular GeForce GTX 970.
Singapore’s AI agenda gets double boost!
Singapore’s aim to be an artificial intelligence (AI) hub has been boosted with two initiatives — the setting up of a shared AI platform for researchers and the awarding of scholarships to develop AI talents.
At the NVIDIA AI Conference in Singapore yesterday, NVIDIA and Singapore’s National Supercomputing Centre (NSCC) agreed to establish a platform to bolster AI capabilities among its academic, research and industry stakeholders and in support of AI Singapore (AISG), a national programme set up in May to drive AI adoption, research and innovation in Singapore.
Called AI.Platform@NSCC, it will provide AI training, technical expertise and computing services to AISG, which brings together all Singapore-based research and tertiary institutions, including the National University of Singapore (NUS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore University of Design and Technology (SUTD), Singapore Management University (SMU), as well as research institutions in the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR).
All 3b Yahoo accounts breached in 2013
This. Is. Serious. Yahoo has revealed that ALL of its three billion user accounts were affected by the August 2013 data theft. The number is three times the one billion accounts that Yahoo said were […]
Changing role of CIO
The role of the CIO is changing, according to a Gartner survey of 3,160 CIO respondents in 98 countries.
The findings revealed that the CIO role is transitioning from delivery executive to business executive, from controlling cost and engineering processes, to driving revenue and exploiting data.
Ninety-five percent of CIOs expect their jobs to change or be remixed due to digitalisation. While world-class IT delivery management is a given, it will take up less and less of the CIO’s time.
China’s tech giants bet on NVIDIA Volta
China’s top technology companies are betting big on the NVIDIA Volta platform.
Alibaba Cloud, Baidu, and Tencent are incorporating NVIDIA Tesla V100 GPU accelerators into their data centres and cloud-service infrastructures to accelerate AI for a broad range of enterprise and consumer applications.
At the heart of the new Volta-based systems is the NVIDIA V100 data centre GPU. Built with 21 billion transistors, it provides a 5x improvement over the preceding NVIDIA Pascal architecture P100 GPU accelerators, while delivering the equivalent performance of 100 CPUs for deep learning. This performance surpasses by 4x the improvements that Moore’s law would have predicted over the same period of time.
Inspur, Lenovo and Huawei are using the NVIDIA HGX reference architecture to offer Volta-based accelerated systems for hyperscale data centres. Using HGX as a starter “recipe,” original equipment manufacturer and original design manufacturer partners can work with NVIDIA to more quickly design and bring to market a wide range of qualified GPU-accelerated AI systems for hyperscale data centres to meet the industry’s growing demand for AI cloud computing.
More NVIDIA GPU offerings on Google Cloud Platform
Google has expanded its NVIDIA GPU offerings on the Google Cloud Platform. These include:
- Performance boost with the public launch of NVIDIA P100 GPUs in beta
- NVIDIA Tesla K80 GPUs available on Google Compute Engine
- Introduction of sustained use discounts on both the Tesla K80 and P100 GPUs
According to a Google Cloud Platform blog, cloud GPUs can accelerate workloads including machine learning training and inference, geophysical data processing, simulation, seismic analysis, molecular modeling, genomics and many more high performance compute use cases.
HPE to cut 5,000 jobs
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) plans to shed 10 percent of its workforce, accounting for at least 5,000 workers globally, according to a Bloomberg report. Expected to start before the year end, the move is in […]
Dell and Asus posts solid growth in monitor market in Q2
Dell and Asus are the leading lights in an overall weak PC monitor market in Q2. Total shipment was 28.5 million units in Q2, a 6.4 percent decline from the corresponding period last year, according to […]
NVIDIA to hold first AI-focused conference in Singapore in October
With artificial intelligence (AI) being a hot topic this year, NVIDIA is organising its first AI-focused regional conference in Singapore on October 23 and 24.
The event will be held in two parts with the first day focusing on Deep Learning Institute (DLI) workshop where participants will received hands-on training on deep learningl and the second day filled with keynote addresses, panel discussion and three tracks. It is targeted at data scientists and senior decision makers in the field of AI in both public and private sectors.
“Singapore is aiming to be the world’s first smart nation and AI is playing a critical role. NVIDIA is well positioned to help drive the government’s Smart Nation initiative with the development of solutions based on AI. Our GPUs are making headlines across the world by enabling many breakthroughs in various industries using deep learning,” said Raymond Teh, Vice President of APAC sales and marketing at NVIDIA.
Australia PC market bucks global trend by inching up 3.3%
Consumer and enterprise PC purchases are driving growth in the Australia PC market, which includes desktop, notebook and workstation.
The consumer segment grew 8.6 percent year over year (YoY) in Q2, according to IDC.
“The retail channel was negatively impacted by Dick Smith’s exit last year. This year however, promotional events such as Modern PC program run by Harvey Norman spiked growth in the consumer space. AMD’s new Ryzen series launch and EOFY sales further fuelled growth in this segment,” said Sagar Raghavendra, Client Devices Analyst of IDC Australia.
March ending for Google Drive
Google Drive on the PC and Mac will cease to exist in its current form from March 2018. According to a blog post by Google, the app will no longer be supported starting on December […]
Sun slips into history
Some may have already forgotten about Sun Microsystems, the company that introduced the SPARC processor and developed Java. The once mighty workstation maker was bought by Oracle in 2010. It seems that the last of […]
AMD Vega price hike irks reviewers
When AMD launched the RX Vega 64 and 56 last month, reviewers were impressed by its price-performance and thought that the new GPUs could give NVIDIA a run for its money. However, it has turned […]
Worldwide semiconductor market to grow 10.2% in 2017
Global semiconductor market is expected to grow 10.2 percent in 2017, to US$77.7 billion, according to Gartner.
This growth rate is up from the previous quarter’s forecast of 1.4 percent, due to continued aggressive investment in memory and leading-edge logic which is driving spending in wafer-level equipment.
“Spending momentum is more concentrated in 2017 mainly due to strong manufacturing demand in memory and leading-edge logic. The NAND flash shortage was more pronounced in the first quarter of 2017 than the previous forecast, leading to over 20 percent growth of etch and chemical vapor deposition (CVD) segments in 2017 with a strong capacity ramp-up for 3D NAND,” said Takashi Ogawa, Research Vice President of Gartner.
Entelechy Asia 