Microsoft

China has initiated a policy shift to eliminate American processors from government computers and servers, reports Financial Times. The decision is aimed to gradually eliminate processors from AMD and Intel from system used by China's government agencies, which will mean lower sales for U.S.-based chipmakers and higher sales of China's own CPUs. The new procurement guidelines, introduced quietly at the end of 2023, mandates government entities to prioritize 'safe and reliable' processors and operating systems in their purchases. This directive is part of a concerted effort to bolster domestic technology and parallels a similar push within state-owned enterprises to embrace technology designed in China. The list of approved processors and operating systems, published by China's Information Technology Security Evaluation Center, exclusively features Chinese companies. There are...

Xbox Series X SoC: Power, Thermal, and Yield Tradeoffs

This week at ISSCC (International Solid State Circuits Conference), Microsoft presented a talk titled ‘Xbox Series X SoC: A Next Generation Gaming Console’, with hardware engineer Paul Paternoster presenting...

82 by Dr. Ian Cutress on 2/15/2021

“Microsoft Pluton Hardware Security Coming to Our CPUs”: AMD, Intel, Qualcomm

One of the key tenets of having good security is reducing how attackable your system is. This is what we call an attack surface – a system needs as...

27 by Dr. Ian Cutress on 11/23/2020

The Xbox Series X Review: Ushering In The Next Generation of Game Consoles

What makes a console generation? The lines have been blurred recently. We can state that the Xbox Series X, and its less-powerful sibling, the Series S, are the next...

68 by Brett Howse on 11/5/2020

Xbox Series X Unboxed: Our First Look At Microsoft’s Next Gen Console

After over a year of official teases, naming, and plenty of performance details, Microsoft is on the cusp of launching their first proper new generation of the Xbox since...

35 by Brett Howse on 10/28/2020

Microsoft Launches the Surface Laptop Go: Lighter In The Hand And The Wallet

Microsoft’s Surface lineup started with a Surface RT tablet, but is now features a wide range of devices targeting different markets, with different price brackets, and different levels of...

63 by Brett Howse on 10/1/2020

Microsoft Surface Pro X Gets A Refresh: SQ2 Processor And Platinum Finish

Microsoft’s Surface Pro X seems to be a very divisive device. Being the only current generation Surface product powered by an Arm-based processor, it thrusts its users directly into...

40 by Brett Howse on 10/1/2020

Hot Chips 2020 Live Blog: Microsoft Xbox Series X System Architecture (6:00pm PT)

Hot Chips has gone virtual this year! Lots of talks on lots of products, including Tiger Lake, Xe, POWER10, Xbox Series X, TPUv3, and a special Raja Koduri Keynote...

59 by Dr. Ian Cutress on 8/17/2020

Microsoft Opens Pre-Orders for Surface Duo - US Only

Late last year in October, Microsoft had announced the Surface Duo, the company’s first ever Android device and first-party smartphone (if you can call it that) release in years...

71 by Andrei Frumusanu on 8/12/2020

OpenXR Update: First Approved Runtimes Now Available, OpenXR Coming to Minecraft

Among the many technologies to come under the purview of the Khronos consortium have been augmented reality and virtual reality. Looking to fulfill the group’s mandate to develop open...

16 by Ryan Smith on 7/28/2020

Storage Matters: Why Xbox and Playstation SSDs Usher In A New Era of Gaming

A new generation of gaming consoles is due to hit the market later this year, and the hype cycle for the Xbox Series X and Playstation 5 has been...

200 by Billy Tallis on 6/12/2020

The Microsoft Surface Book 3 (15-Inch) Review: A Refreshing Dip Into Ice Lake

The PC industry has introduced some remarkably exciting designs over the last five years or so. Some of those designs, such as the thin-bezel laptop, have been adopted by...

125 by Brett Howse on 6/3/2020

Microsoft Springs A Surface Refresh: Surface Book 3 And Surface Go 2 Plus Accessories

This morning Microsoft is announcing a refresh on a couple more of their Surface products that did not get updated back in October. The Surface Book 3 and Surface...

43 by Brett Howse on 5/6/2020

Microsoft Unveils DirectX 12 Ultimate: The GPU Feature Set For the Next Generation of Games

While the 2020 Game Developers Conference has been postponed, that thankfully doesn’t mean everything gaming-related for this spring has been postponed as well. As the saying goes, the show...

53 by Ryan Smith on 3/19/2020

Microsoft Now Offers Azure NVv4 Virtual Machines with AMD EPYC & Radeon Instinct

AMD’s 2nd Generation EPYC processors have gained a strong recognition among cloud computing companies, and today numerous instances are powered by AMD’s latest server CPUs. By contrast, however, the...

19 by Anton Shilov on 3/18/2020

Microsoft Drops More Xbox Series X Tech Specs: Zen 2 + RDNA 2, 12 TFLOPs GPU, HDMI 2.1, & a Custom SSD

For the past several months both Microsoft and Sony have been slowly but steadily trickling out additional details about their forthcoming gaming consoles. And now this morning we’re getting...

74 by Ryan Smith on 2/24/2020

The Microsoft Surface Laptop 3 Showdown: AMD's Ryzen Picasso vs. Intel's Ice Lake

Occasionally the stars align. It is very rare in the laptop space that we're able to test two devices, with two very different CPU platforms, with the fewest number...

174 by Brett Howse & Andrei Frumusanu on 12/13/2019

Microsoft Announces Xbox Series X: Available Holiday 2020

Microsoft this evening has finally given their long-awaited next generation gaming console a name, announcing the Xbox Series X. The device, formerly known as Project Scarlett, is said to...

83 by Ryan Smith on 12/12/2019

Microsoft Ends Support for Windows 10 Mobile

Microsoft this week has finally retired Windows 10 mobile, ending support for its smartphone OS. However, in a quirk of differing lifecycle policies, the software giant will continue to...

20 by Anton Shilov on 12/11/2019

Qualcomm Snapdragon Tech Summit Day 3 Live Blog: ACPC and XR

The annual Qualcomm Snapdragon Tech Summit is in its final day, and the main focal points for discussion are the Windows on Snapdragon-based Always Connected PCs, with updates to...

21 by Dr. Ian Cutress on 12/5/2019

Lenovo: Foldable ThinkPad X1 to Launch in 2020

At Canalys Channels Forum last week, Lenovo finally revealed launch timeframe for its foldable ThinkPad X1 hybrid notebook that was first revealed in May. The company says that the...

9 by Anton Shilov on 10/21/2019

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