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The next gen Kirin 980 is being manufactured at TSMC's foundries and uses the 7 nm process. Huawei will also include a new AI chip from Cambricon and an improved GPU, so the upcoming Kirin 980 will surely battle it out with Samsung's Exynos 9820 and Apple's A12 SoCs. The latest HiSilicon chip is scheduled to be launched with the Mate 20 flagships later this year.

The 7 nm manufacturing process will be superseded by the 5 nm one by 2020. Right now, TSMC is working to improve the extreme ultraviolet lithography tech that should lead to reduced power consumption and considerable performance gains for the 7+ nm chips in late 2018. TSMC estimates that the performance gains and power requirements will see minor improvements with the 5 nm stepping.

Lenovo has announced the M720 and M920 updates to the ThinkCentre tower, small form factor (SFF), and 'Tiny' models. These business orientated machines feature affordable price tags and optional Thunderbolt 3 and dGPU.

Last week, the Taiwanese government announced that ZTE would have to take permission before embarking on any business partnerships with a Taiwanese company. That permission has been granted now, though, allow ZTE to do business with MediaTek.

The latest solid state drives from Samsung have only just been launched, and they have already received price cuts. The tech giant announced the 970 Pro and Evo NVMe SSDs in April, with the devices being made available for purchase on May 7. It is now possible to obtain the drives at cheaper rates than the suggested retail prices listed in the April press release.

It appears neither Bill Gates nor Warren Buffett are the greatest fans of bitcoin. Both men have been recently reported saying rather disparaging things about the famous cryptocurrency, which may have prevented bitcoin from achieving a five-figure value for the first time since March. Regulation concerns are believed to have also contributed to the slight dip in price.

An entry for the upcoming Nvidia GeForce GTX 1180 graphics card has been made in TechPowerUp’s GPU database. Notebookcheck already reported on rumors surrounding the next-gen GPU and the data that has now surfaced online seems to support some of the expected specifications, including 3584 shading units and a 256-bit memory bus.

A news post on Steam has revealed the name for PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds upcoming map: Sanhok. The developers are opening an experimental server for the map from May 10 to May 14, giving PUBG fans the opportunity to test the latest addition. Meanwhile, over at Fortnite one of the most villainous characters from the Marvel Universe will be paying a visit. The first lucky player to wield the Infinity Gauntlet will turn into Thanos.

The codenames for the upcoming Vega 20 and Vega 12 GPUs were mentioned in the latest LLVM and Clang compiler patches. Codenamed GFX906, the Vega 20 will support native AI instructions and the patch information reveals that it will benefit from the 7 nm tech, while the Vega 12 codenamed GFX904 is rumored to be replacing the Polaris series (Radeon RX 580 and co.) later this year.

Xiaomi's upcoming Redmi S2 has been spotted on an AliExpress listing. The seller is a reputable store, so details of the device have been all but confirmed now.

Xiaomi ended 2017 with a bang and has carried that fine form into the new year. According to a report by IDC, the company shipped 28 million smartphone units in Q1 2018, ending the quarter as the fourth-largest smartphone company in the world, ahead of OPPO.

The Huawei P20 devices may not be coming to the US but they will make the trip over to Canada. Carriers Rogers and Fido currently have the P20 and P20 Pro on pre-order. The P20 Lite is, of course, duly ignored.

While AT&T officials confirmed that the company will not add the LG G7 ThinQ to its portfolio, they also revealed that a new exclusive LG device is headed their way and should go on sale this summer. Unconfirmed reports claim that this device is the upcoming notch-less LG V35 ThinQ.

Nvidia has decided to cancel the controversial GeForce Partner Program (GPP). A blog post by John Teeple, the person responsible for Nvidia’s GeForce Partner Marketing, has the very unambiguous title “Pulling the Plug on GPP, Leaning into GeForce.” The program has attracted a considerable amount of criticism since its introduction barely two months ago.

A Swiss technology company has started rolling out smart banknotes called Tangem Notes that offer a physical presence for cryptocurrencies. The "banknotes," which are actually plastic cards, have been launched for sale in a large store in Singapore and there are plans for a wider rollout throughout 2018 and 2019. Currently available Tangem banknotes are valued at 0.01 BTC and 0.05 BTC.

The slate tablet continues to sink while detachables steadily grow to take its place. Apple, Samsung, and Huawei were collectively responsible for over 55 percent of all tablets sold worldwide during the first quarter of 2018. Convertible notebooks, or systems that can twist, flip, or spin, have not been included in the data. The news comes just days after rumors of Q2 2018 being yet another low for the tablet market.

The first DDR5 memory modules are slated for a 2019 commercial release, while JEDEC will finalize the specifications this summer. The DDR5-4400 module demoed by Cadence requires lower voltages and is considerably faster than the current DDR4-3200 standard, even with CL42 latencies. Later on, speeds will be upped to 6400 MT/s and capacities should reach up to 32 Gb per chip.

Less than two days after two more powerful XPS 15 9570 configurations were listed on the official Dell website, two cheaper variants join the lineup. Starting at US$999.99, these models come with 8 GB of memory and 8th generation Intel Core processors (i5-8300H with a 5400 rpm 1 TB hybrid drive and i7-8750H with a 256 MB PCIe SSD).

All Verizon Samsung Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ handsets will soon be pre-loaded with the following Oath apps: Newsroom, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, and Go90. Although the financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed, it has been revealed that Samsung and Oath will share the ad revenue generated by the aforementioned apps.

A new weapon has been revealed as part of the latest patch for PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG), but it seems not even original content can help Bluehole’s game in the battle royale war against Fortnite. According to analysts, the title from Epic Games made over five times as much as PUBG in first week cumulative iOS revenue.

Microsoft has recently updated its store with a new configuration of the Surface Pro. It is now possible to buy an Intel Core i5-powered Surface Pro with 128 GB SSD and 8 GB RAM for US$999. Previously, Microsoft offered the 4 GB RAM version of the device at this price, but this model is now being advertised for US$799.

A report by the Wall Street Journal has stated that Telegram has scrapped plans to carry out an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) for the public. Apparently, because the two coin presales that have already been carried out for private investors have attracted US$1.7 billion in funds, there is now no need for the instant messaging service to engage in a public ICO.

According to Sony, 3.1 million copies of God of War have been sold in the first three days of the game’s release. The latest installment in the famous franchise was launched on April 20 and has been met with critical acclaim. The action-adventure title, which was developed by the Sony-owned SIE Santa Monica Studio, has already become the fastest-selling PlayStation 4 exclusive to date.

Thanks to TSMC's new stacked wafer manufacturing process, future CPUs and GPUs could double the performance just by integrating dies with two wafers. For now, only two wafers can be stacked one on top of the other, but in the future, dies could include multiple wafers and get a vertical design, instead of a horizontal one. The only problem is current dual-wafer designs have low yields for manufacturing processes under 16 nm, but TSMC is working to improve that.

Frank Azor has confirmed that the much anticipated Dell XPS 15 9570 notebook is likely to launch this week. This would be highly welcomed by those eager to lay their hands on the laptop as the ongoing Cashstar pre-order promo met with sharp criticism from prospective buyers.

A press release from Cambridge Analytica and parent company SCL Group has stated that all the firm's operations have ceased. Insolvency applications have been filed in the UK and bankruptcy proceedings will soon commence in the USA. The company’s closure has been attributed to “damage caused to the business by the unfairly negative media coverage” in relation to the ongoing Facebook data scandal.

The recent Cambridge Analytica scandal forced Facebook to delay the launch of its first smart speakers, which are now scheduled to arrive in October, loaded with the Facebook M artificial intelligence software solution. These smart home accessories were initially scheduled to arrive in July.

There has been a report suggesting that Dell and HP could be working on new high-end Chromebooks. Currently, there are scant options when it comes to choosing a premium Chromebook for use in the enterprise sector; the Google Pixelbook Chromebook and HP Chromebook 13 G1 are two options. It is claimed the new devices would utilize up to 16 GB RAM and operate with Kaby Lake processors.

A report from a leading investment banking firm has forecast that cryptocurrencies are heading for a 90% correction within the next 12 months that will devastate the cryptocurrency market. Many virtual currencies could be wiped out, although those that survive the predicted market turmoil will enjoy impressive growth in the resulting less-cramped environment.

The only two quad-core Kaby Lake-X CPUs launched back in summer 2017were supposed to provide an entry point for the Intel's HEDT chips, but sold very poorly, because the Coffee Lake hexa-cores launched just a few months later. OEMs and resellers will be able to order the two chips up until November 30 and Intel will be pulling the plug on May 31, 2019.

It looks like a certain type of governments does not like Telegram at all since Iran is now banning the popular encrypted messaging service that was recently taken down in Russia. Telegram has about 40 million users in Iran and has been apparently used to organize the protests that took place back in January.

Although Xiaomi might be leading the Indian smartphone market when it comes to the totals, things look quite different in the premium area. Here, Samsung leads with a 29 percent share, followed by OnePlus and Apple. However, the best-selling premium handset seems to be the OnePlus 5T, which accounts for 25 percent in this small niche.

Dell is refreshing the Wyse small form-factor PC series with Intel Gemini Lake ULV CPUs. The new Wyse 5070 family will include two lower-end Celeron models and two higher-end Pentium models with up to 1600 factory configurations, which can be further customized with additional RAM, storage and even discrete GPUs.

Global tablet shipments are expected to drop to a little more than 31 million units in the second quarter of this year, reveals DigiTimes. This all-time low comes one year after the market bottomed at 33 million units (in the first quarter of 2017). However, the market is expected to bounce back a bit later this year thanks to the introduction of the new Apple iPad Pro and the Amazon Prime Day.

The testing of the downvote button continues with a limited number of Facebook users, but now this feature rolls out to those in Australia and New Zealand. Just as before, this button allows the users to provide feedback about the comments on public posts, so the dislike button remains nothing more but a wish that Facebook continues to ignore for the time being.

Barclay's analyst Blayne Curtis is predicting that Apple will stop bundling the Lightning to 3.5mm audio adapter with the iPhone released this fall. If this prediction comes true, iPhone users that want wired audio would have to separately purchase the adapter at a small (but annoying) additional cost.

The venerable Core architecture first released in 2006 is rapidly approaching its final days, as Intel is hard at work on a next gen microarchitecture that should take performance to the next level. A recent job listing revealed that this architecture is codenamed Ocean Cove, and it could be implemented in Alder Lake cores some time in 2020 or 2021.

Manufacturers may have been artificially inflating DRAM prices by restricting supply and agreeing to not cannibalize the market share of others. The abnormal rise in revenue by as much as 166 percent YoY has caused at least one U.S. law firm to investigate further into the matter with correlative results.

Initially planned for launch in 2016, Intel has delayed the launch of the 10nm based next-generation 'Cannon Lake' CPUs to 2019, which the company announced in their first-quarter earnings report of 2018. It is not the first time Intel has delayed 10nm process-based CPUs; furthermore, there is no mention of as to when in 2019 will Intel release 'Cannon Lake' chips.

Dell commissioned a study in collaboration with Researchscape to understand the PC gaming community. The study brings forth some new facts about gamers, their habits, and attitudes and breaks the typical stereotyping commonly associated with them.

There has been a growing wave of people in the community calling the Exklim eX Core a scam. Some feel that the eX Core fills a new niche, some think that it can't achieve the claimed performance, while others believe it doesn't exist at all. We haven't seen any working products and we don't endorse the eX Core, but we did feel it was important to give Edgar the chance to answer some of the communities questions.

Sony's PlayStation 4 remains one of the company's biggest revenue sources. The console sold 2.5 million copies in the first quarter of this year to extend its all-time sales to a massive 76 million. That figure is expected to rise across all coming quarters of the year, with new games like God of War, and the upcoming Red Dead Redemption 2 and Spiderman.

The CDMA giant has only one-third the install base of the largest smartphone carrier in the U.S. at only 53 million users. Should it merge with T-Mobile, the combined user count would still be millions fewer than Verizon and AT&T, but the combined resources would allow Deutsche Telekom and SoftBank to better compete in the wake of 5G technology. Talks between T-Mobile and Sprint have been on and off for the past 4 years due to anti-trust concerns.

The AMD processors that will probably hit the market soon were recently spotted in the official product master list available on AMD.com. In addition to the dual-core and quad-core desktop and mobile Ryzen processors, there are also three Threadrippers: the octa-core 2900X, the 12-core 2920X, and the 16-core 2950X.