Thursday, April 23, 2020

HW news - Crysis Remastered Ray Tracing, NVIDIA DLSS 2 ...

Crysis Can't Run Crysis: Remastered

Crytek, which has most likely resumed paying its employees, woke its Crysis twitter account this week to tease everyone about its Crysis Remastered replace. There's no release date yet (apart from the ominous "soon"), however the video game will launch for notebook, playstation four, Xbox One, and even the Nintendo swap, which is a first for Crysis.

The online game's quickly-on-line webpage, which looks a lot like an unintended leak but was likely just architected advertising and marketing, claims that the video game will circulation to up to date Cryengine with API-agnostic raytracing. API-agnostic ray tracing changed into already proven by Crytek in the past. It still helps to have RT hardware physically on the GPU, but we're uncertain at present of the extent to which Crysis Remastered will use NVIDIA's RT hardware.

source: https://www.crysis.com/

additional supply: https://www.pcgamer.com/crysis-remastered-is-coming-to-workstation-with-ray-tracing-greater-decision-textures/

NVIDIA RTX for Minecraft, DLSS 2.0

The Minecraft RTX beta launched for Minecraft on windows keep this week, following-up on certainly one of NVIDIA's greatest identify gets given that RTX launched. Minecraft raytracing has existed for a long time now, nevertheless it's been thoroughly finished via mods which are unable to leverage RT hardware and are commonly unoptimized as compared to the Minecraft RTX respectable launch. This RTX edition will definitely make use of RT hardware on NVIDIA 20-series playing cards, and now that Minecraft is on-board, NVIDIA has expanded the reach and validity of its raytracing add-ons right into a vastly wider viewers.

Minecraft with the RTX update will introduce a brand new PBR (physically-based mostly rendering) system, including typical help to mats for things like roughness. Mats will support reflections, refractions, and international illumination according to their residences and the residences of the lights round them. DXR and RTX will add volumetric consequences, like crepuscular rays (regularly "god-rays") and fog, the anticipated reflections on surfaces which might replicate, and new emissive lighting for lava and glowstone.

This replace additionally brings DLSS 2.0 to Minecraft, which NVIDIA admits as being the "repair" to its DLSS 1 blunder. DLSS 2.0 uses tensor cores on RTX GPUs to, quote, "presents photo first-class similar to native decision while rendering only one quarter to one half of the pixels." one of the most biggest problems with DLSS 1.0 became its per-video game deployment, whatever NVIDIA is trying to repair. The business wrote right here in its weblog post:

"The common DLSS required practising the AI network for each new online game. DLSS 2.0 trains the use of non-game-selected content material, supplying a generalized network that works throughout video games. This skill faster video game integrations, and eventually greater DLSS games."

The new edition of DLSS will now have excellent settings, together with efficiency modes to assist negate the efficiency hit from ray tracing. both are meant for use collectively to make the online game greater playable with ray tracing enabled.

NVIDIA is doing this through the use of a neural community and training on a DGX supercomputer. The community takes photographs generated through the game engine as input, including a spotlight on action vector analysis to plot a background of object flow and assignment its future actions. NVIDIA writes:

"right through the practicing manner, the output photograph is in comparison to an offline rendered, ultra-excessive exceptional 16K reference photograph, and the change is communicated returned into the community so that it could actually proceed to be trained and enrich its effects. This system is repeated tens of hundreds of instances on the supercomputer until the network reliably outputs excessive high-quality, high decision photos."

NVIDIA has completely transformed DLSS.

supply: https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/information/minecraft-with-rtx-home windows-beta-launch-brings-extraordinary-ray-traced-visuals-to-millions-of-game enthusiasts

supply: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/information/nvidia-dlss-2-0-a-huge-soar-in-ai-rendering/

HDD Makers seemingly Hiding SMR expertise

It seems deploying SMR expertise in HDDs and not disclosing that reality to clients is all the rage with HDD makers this present day. For the uninitiated, SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording) is a procedure that adds density with out including platters. SMR writes new information tracks that overlap current records tracks, basically shingling the records tracks corresponding to roof shingles -- hence the 'shingled' within the name.

This permits HDD makers to economically boost density devoid of including platters or altering study/write heads, which is essential within the ever-waning HDD market that's been ordinarily relegated to cheap storage. besides the fact that children, it comes with a serious caveat in terms of random write performance. If any information tune needs to be modified, or new data must be written, any shingled statistics tracks need to be absolutely rewritten along with it. This makes SMR inferior for write-intensive functions. This in itself isn't an issue; despite the fact, HDD makers now not disclosing it to customers is.

for example, it grew to be obvious (by way of reddit and Tom's Hardware) that Western Digital is currently shipping WD purple drives (for NASes) that use SMR, with out selecting the drives as the use of SMR. users on Reddit have claimed that these drives are performing poorly, can't be configured as it should be in ZFS arrays, and are challenging in RAID setups, among different considerations.

On the heels of this information, it abruptly grew to become obvious that Toshiba and Seagate interact in the equal nebulous apply, because of Chris Mellor with Block & info. Toshiba verified to dam & data that its P300 uses SMR, but does not doc the use of SMR in any client documentation or marketing substances. Seagate also tested to block & info that lots of its HDDs in its Barracuda line use SMR, but once again, it's not made clear to patrons in any documentation.

SMR is excellent for WORM (write once, read many) or cold statistics storage, or anything else this is examine intensive. besides the fact that children, with all (three) HDD makers decisively advertising certain HDDs with out disclosing the use of SMR, it's inevitable that extra patrons, unbeknownst to them, will come to be with a force not gold standard for his or her application. expectantly this tactic will change, but don't colour us hopeful.

supply: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/wd-fesses-up-some-crimson-hdds-use-slow-smr-tech

https://blocksandfiles.com/2020/04/15/seagate-2-4-and-8tb-barracuda-and-computer-hdd-smr/

https://blocksandfiles.com/2020/04/sixteen/toshiba-laptop-disk-drives-undocumented-shingle-magnetic-recording/

AMD Rolls-Out 2nd-Gen Epyc 7Fx2 Chips

AMD recently trotted-out its latest Epyc choices to bolster its assault on Intel's server market share. the new Epyc 7Fx2 are nevertheless Epyc 'Rome' derivatives in accordance with Zen 2. youngsters, they are almost frequency-optimized counterparts to some of AMD's present SKUs in the Epyc 7xx2 stack. AMD is additionally claiming the Epyc 7Fx2 CPUs signify "the realm's highest per-core efficiency x86 server CPU."

The Epyc 7Fx2 line encompasses three SKUs: the Epyc 7F32 (8C/16T), Epyc 7F52 (16C/32T), and Epyc 7F72 (24C/48T). First and most suitable, all SKUs leverage a ~500Mhz increase to base clocks, and significant uplifts in boost clocks. Secondly, AMD has endowed each SKU with a considerable raise in L3 cache. especially, 128MB for the Epyc 7F32, 256MB for the Epyc 7F52, and 192MB for the Epyc 7F72. 

Nothing is for free of charge, despite the fact. the new chips also come with greater TDPs, to the tune of 180W - 240W. moreover, the brand new 7Fx2 chips will additionally include similar positive aspects in rate, as these are well-nigh binned, cherry-picked chips. The Epyc 7F32, 7F52, and 7F72 will have a 1Ku price of $2,one hundred, $3,one hundred, and $2,450 respectively. 

AMD is positioning the chips as surest for database, industrial excessive-efficiency computing (HPC) and hyperconverged infrastructure workloads. AMD has additionally already seen valued clientele within its ecosystem adopting Epyc 7Fx2. These include big names similar to Dell, HPE, IBM Cloud, and Microsoft, amongst others. 

supply: https://www.amd.com/en/press-releases/2020-04-14-new-2nd-gen-amd-epyc-processors-redefine-performance-for-database

Rumor: PS5 Manufacturing can be restrained for First Run

Per Bloomberg's reporting, Sony could be dialing back construction of its upcoming PS5 console, at the least at the beginning. We deserve to note that Bloomberg has had a checkered accuracy with rumors, so we wouldn't believe their rumors reasonably as plenty as, say, Digitimes.

in response to Bloomberg, citing sources near Sony, it appears Sony is concerned that there can be some decal shock for the PS5. each Sony and Microsoft are making large generational leaps when it comes to hardware with their respective consoles. We've lined both fairly somewhat over the remaining couple months, but each consoles will leverage 8C/16T semi-customized AMD SoCs, 16GB of GDDR6 (which we are expecting nevertheless hasn't reached price parity with GDDR5) and pretty dense solid state storage techniques -- none of that are inexpensive. 

Of route, each Sony and Microsoft have touted these specs (Microsoft greater so than Sony) with out 

addressing the elephant within the room: price. while nothing concrete has surfaced, it's been recommended that $499 may be the new normal for consoles, as stronger hardware will facilitate an equally effective rate tag. moreover, Bloomberg mentions that game developers working on games for the PS5 predict a value aspect between $499 to $549. It looks Sony is cautious of overproducing PS5 consoles in its first run, for fear of a slower adoption as a result of cost. little question that the present economic climate isn't conducive to high expenditure on entertainment devices, which possible additionally impacts Sony's resolution-making.

source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-sixteen/sony-is-stated-to-plan-restrained-playstation-5-output-in-first-12 months

more than 500K Zoom money owed Surfaced on darkish web

In today's episode of Delete Zoom, we're going to look at how some 500,000 Zoom money owed being aggregated on the darkish net underscores Zoom's laughable safety, if that's what we're calling it. 

Zoom has risen to prominence thanks in part to the current pandemic, and also as a result of Microsoft hasn't determined if it will quite compete with Snapchat or Slack while letting Skype endlessly rot. based on Zoom CEO Eric S. Yuan, energetic every day clients on Zoom exploded from 10 million in December to 200 million this previous March -- highlighting that pre-pandemic, no one knew what Zoom turned into.

With a surge in its person base got here a magnifying glass that put Zoom's protection -- or lack thereof -- beneath nearer examination. every little thing from the inability of end-to-end encryption (which Zoom promised and didn't carry), to seriously questionable call routing, all the method to the more well-known and repugnant "Zoom-bombing" has arisen in contemporary weeks. no longer to mention, safety consultants have found numerous flaws that have an effect on each windows and Mac clients.

To Zoom's credit, the company has scrambled to unlock patches addressing some of those issues, and has vowed to ratchet up protection development over the next several months. not to Zoom's credit, Zoom-bombing -- which is still plaguing the carrier. To salt the wound, past this week, over 500,000 Zoom bills surfaced on the dark web, some selling for only a penny. Others were being given away for free, which is a typical practice on darkish web hacking forums. 

most of the credentials which have surfaced on the darkish internet have been bought via credential stuffing attacks, whereby attackers use credentials uncovered in previous information breaches. most likely, here's mainly constructive if users are recycling passwords for a lot of websites and capabilities. And whereas a certain amount of blame must be shifted to users refusing to use enjoyable passwords or password managers, it isn't doing anything for Zoom's graphic in the intervening time.

Per BleepingComputer, Zoom has "hired dissimilar intelligence firms to locate these password dumps and the equipment used to create them, in addition to a company that has shut down lots of internet sites making an attempt to trick clients into downloading malware or giving up their credentials. We continue to examine, are locking money owed we've found to be compromised, asking users to trade their passwords to whatever thing more secure, and are looking at imposing extra expertise solutions to bolster our efforts."             

supply: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/safety/over-500-000-zoom-accounts-sold-on-hacker-boards-the-darkish-web/

Folding@domestic Hits 2.4 exaFLOPS

The meteoric upward push of Folding@home's compute vigor continues unabated, following successful recruiting campaigns from no longer only PCMR and Nvidia, however many tech publications as neatly. Folding@home has notched a few milestones, such as reaching a compute vigor besting the good 7 supercomputers combined and finally crossing the almighty exascale barrier now not long after.

Now, Folding@house is touting a combined 2.4 exaFLOPS of computational energy unfold across its distributed network of folders. For these counting, that's more than the accurate 500 supercomputers mixed. at least, when it comes to sheer x86 exaFLOPS. Of course, supercomputers might do definite things enhanced -- like their standard defense force research for which they're deployed.

youngsters, the heightened pastime in Folding@domestic's initiatives have resulted in anything of a drought when it comes to WUs, whatever thing Folding@home has been working to rectify. "greater GPU work units are coming for @foldingathome. we've got needed to shift a few of our effort from developing initiatives to relocating facts off servers to make room for extra facts. it's stunning how directly the facts is coming in! some thing like 6TB/hr," spoke of Greg Bowman, Folding@home's Director, by means of Twitter.

GN's machines are in a position to producing about 7 million PPD when full of WUs, besides the fact that children we've been between 4M and 6M on ordinary. The GN team is #234771, if you want to join, and we've moved into the good a hundred teams of all time in fast time. Linus is currently ranked #four, and we're now #81 up from the deep hundreds or thousands up to now, something the depths have been.

source: https://www.tomshardware.com/information/foldinghome-coronavirus-combat-powerful-top-500-supercomputers

Rumor: Ryzen 3 3100 and Ryzen 3 3100X

everybody's favourite hardware leaker is lower back this week, with purported information regarding rumored Ryzen three chips. ultimate year's Ryzen 3000 household certainly in no way produced any Ryzen 3 chips for the laptop, even though if advice that momomo_us has gleaned is correct, AMD might probably have at least two quad-core SKUs in the works for a Ryzen three revival. 

by the use of Twitter, momomo_us has pointed to guidance showing a 4C/8T Ryzen three 3100 and Ryzen 3 3100X. Given the naming, we will expect these may be in response to Zen 2, 7nm silicon. in addition, the Ryzen 3 3100 would run an alleged clock speed of 3.9 GHz while the Ryzen 3 3100X would characteristic a clock speed of 4.3 GHz. The leak didn't notice even if these had been base or enhance speeds. 

The leak additional mentions a 65W TDP and a complete of 18MB of cache. These chips would little question target upcoming Intel's reduce-rung i3 SKUs from its looming Comet Lake S line-up. Per our normal managing of rumors, take this with all due salt.  

supply: https://twitter.com/momomo_us/fame/1250780008123002881

Editorial: Eric Hamilton, Steve BurkeVideo: Josh Svoboda, Keegan Gallick

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