**Samsung Eyes Texas for New $17 Billion Semiconductor Manufacturing Facility**

Samsung is considering expanding its semiconductor manufacturing facilities to the United States, with Texas being one of the top contenders. According to documents filed with the state of Texas, Samsung's new facility would be a 7 million square foot fab that would create approximately 1800 jobs. The project, dubbed "Silicon Silver," is estimated to cost over $17 billion and would double check the company's existing S2 fab in Austin.

The facility would provide access to a strong private-public relationship with the city and state of Texas, which Samsung believes is crucial for its success. However, Samsung is also seeking states that can provide it with access to talent and an existing manufacturing supply ecosystem. With no decision made yet, multiple locations within the US are under consideration.

**Chrome Ditches Old CPUs and Intel Support Ends**

Chromium developers have issued a notification that Google Chrome will be dropping support for older CPUs, specifically those without SSE3 (Supplementary Streaming Extensions 3) capability. This change starts with Chrome 89 and affects machines running Windows XP, Vista, or 7. The document notes that SSE2 was introduced on Intel X86 CPUs in 2000 and AMD CPUs shortly after, while SSE3 was introduced on Intel CPUs around 2003 and AMD CPUs in 2005.

As a result of this change, Chrome will warn users with impacted machines about the incompatibility, but it will not provide any compatibility mode to fix the issue. Users with older CPUs may experience crashes or stopping working with Chrome and other Chromium apps until such a time as SSE3 becomes officially required.

**ISPs Warned About Starlink's Capacity Shortfall**

A study commissioned by the Fiber Broadband Association (FBA) and the Rural Broadband Association has warned that SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet service will fall short of FCC deployment goals. The study, which was reviewed by the FCC, found that Starlink would struggle to deliver 100 megabits per second download speeds as required by the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RUDOLF).

The report alleges that given certain assumptions and model scenarios, approximately 56-57% of RUDOLF subscribers may not receive enough bandwidth to avoid service degradation during peak hours. The study urges the FCC to reconsider whether Starlink is deserving of the $886 million in funding awarded by the agency over 10 years.

**Traditional ISPs Would Love More Funds for Existing Networks**

The study's findings have raised concerns about the allocation of RUDOLF funds, which were originally intended to support rural internet infrastructure. The report suggests that some traditional ISPs, such as CenturyLink and Frontier, routinely fall short of FCC and ARTS requirements. With Starlink potentially becoming a dominant force in rural internet, the report questions whether it's worth allocating more funds to existing networks.

The FCC will review the study, but it seems unlikely that it will reconsider allocating funds to Starlink at this point. The agency may instead opt to keep the current allocation and monitor the performance of existing ISPs and new entrants like Starlink.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwelcome back to the hardware news recap for the week in this one we'll be talking about linux focus from amd andy is hiring for several linux focused positions in engineering and management and it looks like it's related to cpus especially on the client side so some job listings will go over there there's a renewed interest in silicon fabrication expansion in the us specifically by amd nvidia and intel all the big three signing the same letter together proposing to the u.s government that they would like some funding to expand silicon manufacturing and fabrication in the u.s intel and rocket lake news cyberpunk's source code leak and a couple of other news stories before that this video is sponsored by linode lynnote is a linux server hosting provider that gn has used for nearly a decade now for its own servers alongside dedicated website hosting linux makes it easy to cut out third-party vpn services to build your own vpn that you fully control easily configured via the interface lenoda also has hundreds of guides for custom servers including game server apps like rust minecraft cs go and guides to host your own video calling servers to eliminate third parties linux is a great way to take back control of software and your hosting and gamers nexus viewers get a 100 credit for 60 days on new accounts at leno.com gamersnexus or click the link below this is going to be a really dense news video there's a lot to go over for this one so it's been a good week for news amd nvidia intel and a lot of other silicon companies wanting to expand us-based fabrication and manufacturing this will be our first story so the big three plus about 98 of the other semiconductor manufacturers joining together in the silicon alliance to propose to the u.s government that they are seeking grants and tax subsidies or cuts in order to help finance the expansion of fabrication most notably the letter to the u.s government included signatures from lisa sue from andy ceo there the current outgoing bob swann from intel will be replaced soon by pat gelsinger and then on nvidia's side the specific person wasn't named but nvidia executive leadership potentially jensen juan or others in the c suite from nvidia signing this letter to the us government so joining all of these ceos together we can create a super ceo a voltron of silicon ceos if you will and with this voltron of silicon ceos you end up with a letter that is specifically noting to the government that the costs of inaction are high that's the quote and as for why these 100 billion plus dollar companies in some instances want assistance it's because silicon fabrication plants are highly sophisticated facilities they cost billions and billions of dollars to build and they require skilled work intel has published many factory floor videos showing how its silicon wafers are processed diced and turned into cpus for instance and this puts into perspective the one the land size that's required and then two the level of engineering required to make the building even operate because silicon is at the heart of the military and government devices countries are now becoming more concerned about where that silicon is being made of course domestic manufacturing would also benefit the companies involved all three of these have headquarters in the u.s in california specifically they score more government contracts for chips and they can also help fund multi-billion dollar fabrication facilities which would be useful for product distribution distribution of fab space and consumption and overall leveling the logistics to be spread out across more uh continents the executives note that the us currently holds 12 percent of silicon fabrication capabilities which is a 25 point drop from the 90s when it was in the 37 percent range the letter said the following quote as a result the us is uncompetitive in attracting investments in new fab construction and our technology leadership is at risk in the race for preeminence in the technologies of the future including artificial intelligence 5g or 6g and quantum computing regardless of where the manufacturing ends up it's clear that the world needs more fabrication facilities and the my numbers are dated but back several years ago when we ran a story on fabrication plants what they cost most of those facilities that we were talking about at the time were in the five six billion dollar range just for the components we were talking about and they've become a lot more advanced over the years so for example tsmc is currently seeking a nine billion dollar investment in a new branch of its own fabrication in japan and that expansion is still seeking funding but it gives an idea for the pure upstart cost an awesome idea for why it's not so easy to just start competing with these companies even if you have the engineering talent or the architectural talent and also why third parties like tsmc have done so well because now you let them take the cost and you sort of amortize it over the production of your chips so that's the plans for silicon manufacturing expansion this is particularly interesting because the past year has demonstrated that a major demand shift or surge out of nowhere like in the past year now completely upends not just the computer market but nearly every market cars have computers in them now and a couple weeks ago we reported on a story about how car manufacturing was brought to a halt because the manufacturers affected like audi and ford for example were incapable of getting chips for the production of those vehicles and so this is clearly more manufacturing capabilities are needed anyway next up amd is building out its linux team so uh this was spotted by or at least we found it on pharonix and it's written by michael larabel phronix first of all is a site we're happy to recommend for its linux benchmarking if you're ever curious about how cpus and gpus perform in linux specifically they do a lot of stuff that we do except hours is focused on windows and they look at the linux side of things really good coverage definitely check it out but pharonix saw that amd is hiring for its team of linux developers and he currently has job listings on its site if you want to apply there's a there's a button right there on the page you can apply now for them and the jobs include engineering jobs uh technical points of contact and liaisons architects and management positions specifically andy has job listings for a linux kernel development manager and these careers page describes this as a mentor to the team of developers and says that this person would enable the design and implementation of linux operating system features supporting amd cpus the job lists responsibilities as including management of an engineering team quote in the area of linux kernel and kvm virtualization development another job listing on amd's page included linux engineering for client devices this is defined as quote a key engineer on our team who configures and tunes linux distribution packages to take advantage of andy technologies on customer platforms amd says this role would participate in planning next generation cpus and apus as well additionally notable the jobs page is seeking a linux architect in the client group with a job role requiring collaboration with silicon architects so that would be your cpu fellows and architects and gpu rtg side to plan features and platform needs amd's been making a big push in server where it gained half a point of market share which is a big deal for the company and server mostly runs linux still these days and and will continue to do so so there could be some of that here but several of these listings specifically point out client client group client devices and uh that would be more consumer facing stuff potentially biz client business client if they are thinking of small business customers for example or uh large businesses too so this could be useful for continuing these portions of server but it is specifically client that's called out and it's likely that this is at least partially attached to oems potentially portables when talking about things like customer platforms up next updates on today project threads uh twitter post that they did talking about unauthorized access to servers for cdpr where apparently cyberpunk 2077 the witcher 3 an unreleased version of the witcher 3 gwent and potentially some other games on source code all had been obtained by a third-party unauthorized agent i.e hacker and following this up just within a couple days or so about a week max there was an auction that eventually led to a direct sale of the source code dump to an undisclosed buyer at this time if you missed cdpr's initial statement it was posted on twitter it's been an unfortunate sequence of months for cdpr at this point but the company in between working on hot fixes and a major update 1.1 for cyberpunk 2777 now had to deal with this and the hack included also financial documents hr documents and internal information investor information cdpr was quick to note that it did not have any reason to suspect at the time that any customer personal information had been leaked from the hacked servers and unauthorized access as for who bought it we don't know it's in theory any kind of corporate espionage in most countries is is varying degrees of illegal from pretty illegal to very illegal those are technical terms but it's possible that you could have something like a consortium of investors or cdpr itself via an unknown entity to protect its own code cdpr publicly said that it wasn't interested in negotiating with the hackers and that would not pay for its own code back uh effectively its servers were being held at ransom as well but cdpr said that it rolled back the servers to a previous update and was able to resolve this the readme file that the hacker allegedly left on the cdpr servers said that it knew that cdpr would probably roll the servers back via a backup and would regain access to them but noted that it's its primary goal was to sell the data that was compromised the readme file that was shared by cdpr also said something along the lines of uh reputation going down the drain as a result of this and that is why we'd like to just quickly bring up one of the tweets we saw in the thread responding to cdpr where someone said isn't it convenient that right now the server gets hacked so that they can push back updates to the game no no that's that's the opposite of convenient and uh it is genuinely one of the stupidest conspiracy theories i've seen about video games so none of that makes sense cdpr would not benefit from saying hmm we need to delay our updates what if we say all of our data was hacked that seems better no that that doesn't make sense anyway uh there might be more information on this but for now it looks like it was sold to an undisclosed buyer and everything will probably go quiet if there's any kind of contract in place but that's the news on on cyberpunk 2077. laptop mining farms are a thing this is sort of interesting in a uh a scary way it looks like a fire waiting to happen although ndxt didn't make any of the laptops there so in what largely appears to be an effort to circumvent gpu discreet card shortages there have been some photos popping up online especially on weibo and chinese social media showing laptop mining farms and a couple on twitter as well with videos showing laptops propped up like tents stacked on shelves handing off of rails and uh some units have even been partially disassembled to allow for better airflow you may be aware that laptops have recently had updates from nvidia with the rtx 30 series coming out and over the last week or so reports have streamed in regarding cryptocurrency miners in china buying up rtx 30 series laptops in bulk for the express purpose of mining ethereum ethereum like btc has been on the rise for months now and it spurs many prospective miners to get as much hashing horsepower as possible wayboy user btcr and twitter user harukaze posted photos and images showing laptops propped up we also noticed in these photos that several of the laptops shown precariously standing in a room with innocent wallpaper depicting dolphins had their batteries removed we assume this is a fire safety choice given the explosive nature of compromised lithium the laptops also share just two visible surge protectors on the news of fire safety with one alone hosting about five to six laptops rtx 30 gpus have been especially popular about ethereum miners but even the mobile skus fare pretty well one content creator made a video where she took her rtx 3060 equipped laptop to a local starbucks and within two hours had allegedly mined enough ethereum to pay for a cup of coffee if it's starbucks we'd we'd assume that cup was about the size of a thimble but the point still stamped it seems that most of the laptops being bought in china are equipped with rtx 3070 or 3060s shown in these photos at least and many of the laptops have come from uh hasi is the english name i'm actually not sure how to pronounce that so it's shen jo tien now and it's one of china's largest computer manufacturers they have several laptop models with rtx 30 series gpus and you can see several of those in the photos that were posted on twitter and wave up next some hardware products news we actually just bought this this is gelid's protection bracket it's cpu protection bracket for amd pga cpus so many of you who've had experience at least removing an amd cpu know that you need to do a good amount of wiggling of the cooler on top of the cpu to loosen the thermal paste and make sure it doesn't end up getting sucked up with the cooler when you remove it and although this isn't too hard to avoid it's annoying enough that if you're doing a lot of socking and unsocking like we do for a certain testing it might be useful to have a bracket that holds the cpu in place this is it looks to be a metal bracket it cost us a dollar fifty when we bought it and it'll be here soon but it's used with socket m4 it simply clamps down secures down over the substrate of the cpu so it does not contact the ihs and then it has four holes where it can connect to whatever mounting mechanism you have for your cpu cooler now presumably this should work with most coolers but a couple downsides here with gelad's cpu protection bracket one is that it will influence the amount of pressure or torque that can be applied on each screw and could influence how the mounting solution comes together once it's all said and done just because you're inserting maybe a one mil thick piece of metal in there we don't have it in hand yet it's brand new it just came out but uh but we'll take a look at that whether we cover it or not not sure yet it depends how interesting it is but the bracket is supposed to basically just keep the cpu in place when you pull the cooler off very simple straightforward we've covered things like this in the past there were a couple that popped up on aliexpress before and this is the first one we were picking up just because we could potentially use something like this depending on again how much it influences the cooler context so that's new from gallaud it's on their site if you're interested in looking into it a dollar fifty what's the price for that one up next uh intel suing a former employee for theft of confidential files and uh for allegedly violating trade secrets so according to intel and court documents filed in the u.s district court in portland oregon intel is suing a former employee by the name of dr gupta and those court documents suggest that gupta was a former product marketing engineer who worked at intel for 10 years before departing from microsoft in january 2020 the suit alleges that the employee had access to confidential intel files during tenure with the company and that those files 3 900 of them were transferred from the intel issued laptop to a pair of thumb drives on the employees last day the files in question are related to how intel customizes and prices its various xeon cpus quote throughout the course of his employment the employee had direct access to documents containing intel confidential information and trade secrets relating to intel's pricing structure and strategies definition of the parameters and manufacturing capabilities for customized xeon processors among other intel confidential information and trade secrets as for why this particular information is a big deal intel alleges that it would allow companies like microsoft for example who end up hiring this person uh or other companies who come into contact with the information the ability to leverage an unfair advantage in negotiating prices down for its xeon products so intel put it as follows they said quote as a purchaser of intel's processors microsoft's rational objective would be to negotiate the most advanced technical features at the lowest achievable price the former employee knew intel's confidential technical and manufacturing capabilities customized product offerings marketing strategies and pricing for xeon processors and used that confidential information and trade secrets to gain an unfair advantage over intel in the negotiations concerning product specifications and pricing for his parts the employee seems to partially deny the claims alleging that only one usb drive exists not two and that the drive was surrendered to microsoft for analysis intel notes and its filings that microsoft has aided in the investigation and forensic analysis and that dr gupta has accessed the stolen files multiple times throughout his employment at microsoft in terms of its objectives intel is seeking 75 000 in damages it's seeking legal fees and it's also looking to bar use of any of that confidential information obviously that's the whole point of all of this we've actually covered corporate espionage stories in the past where micron in particular was the center of one of these where there were employees being traded around or hired by competing companies and it seemed like the the premise of most of those cases were much like this one where a new employer just happens to hire an employee who happens to bring with them a drive full of documents that could be useful to the competitor in this case it's not a competitor it's more of a partner but this is something that's popped up in the hardware industry a couple times over the last few years up next intel's roger kadori is again making headlines this time teasing the intel xe hpg gpu which is uh intel's eventual enthusiast gaming gpu it was running a 3dmark benchmark previously we covered kodori's teasing of a die shot for the seven nanometer xehpc solution that we believe will eventually take the form of pontivechio and qatari is back at it this time again with hpg so the test was an unreleased 3dmark benchmark that's a new shader mesh feature test we suspect this is the xe hpg dg2 variant which would be the dgpu counterpart to the lower end dg1 there isn't much to glean from the tweet other than intel's testing and development for xe hpg must be well underway if it's already being tested in 3dmark this could also bode well for rumors of a late 2021 or early 2022 release speculation isn't worth much but talk online seems to suggest intel targeting performance somewhere between the 30 70 and an rx 6800 but again that's based on very little the gpu should come with current marquee features like ray tracing support gddr6 memory and we know it'll be manufactured outside of intel likely on one of tsmc or samsung's nodes kodori's post also shows the upper and lower deck of the silicon that's because this uses intel's multi-layered packaging approach that it detailed with favaros previously some marked sections show 7 nanometer and 10 nanometer superfin silicon side by side and this is the unique feature for intel's approach also in intel news this time for intel desktop cpu so rocket lake s is coming out in march probably from what it looks like right now later will be alder lake but rocket lake s should be intel's last batch of 14 nanometer skylake derived silicon before finally moving on with alder lake s on intel's 10 nanometer superfin later this year in theory so rocket league s is supposed to be back ported cypress cove architecture and as intel is want to do it's already axing support for lower tier motherboards as it relates to rocket lake ass compatibility an updated support document regarding bios updates for upcoming 11th gen cpus states that b460 and h410 chipsets will not see support for the new chips but z490 has already been known for a while now to support them the document also addresses that z490 and h470 based boards will likely require a bios update to boot with rocket lake s this is fairly routine when new processors get dropped into existing boards and isn't really a surprise as for rocket like support it seems the upgrade pathway for owners of b460 or h410 is to either move to z490 or h470 or shell out for a 500 series board which are slowly coming out to market both options are a dead end considering alder lake will introduce a new lga 1700 socket though earlier we talked about the silicon manufacturing uptick in fabrication plants in the u.s or just in general and japan for example with csmc and continuing in that topic samsung is looking to expand its us-based semiconductor manufacturing operations it's looking at austin texas it's also looking at several other potential host states including arizona and new york so samsung already has one manufacturing facility stateside that is the s2 fab based in austin texas the s2 plant mostly deals with older process nodes all of samsung's newest process nodes and leading technology are in south korea over the last few years the u.s has slowly been cranking up pressure on semiconductor manufacturers and vice versa to bring more production over a state site tsmc has already announced plans for a 12 billion plant in arizona tsmc's future arizona location will initially focus on five nanometers but will likely also ctsmc's future nodes as well being that tsmc is already putting five nanometer chips out if all goes to plans tsmc should have an arizona plan to come online in 2024. of course samsung doesn't want to be left out and so it's expanding its north american operation right now it seems samsung is in the courting phase as it chooses which state will offer it the most resources and financial incentives according to the austin statesman samsung is seeking incentives and subsidized breaks worth more than one billion dollars from texas samsung says that in return its facility would be 7 million square feet to double check that and would create apparently 1800 jobs it says the new fab if located in austin would be close to the existing s2 fab that samsung has there and it would cost more than 17 billion dollars all totaled according to documents filed with texas samsung is seeking a state that can provide it access to talent it's also looking for a state that has access to an existing manufacturing supply ecosystem too bad there's not a dating app for silicon fabrication manufacturers so this is the the plan right now but it's still looking at different states samsung is seeking a high speed to market it wants a what it says is a strong private public relationship with the city and the state that it would be located in and samsung's current plans based on the documents would not move any r d to the u.s and would only consist of manufacturing based on various factors we're reviewing the possibility of expanding our semiconductor manufacturing facilities a number of global locations including multiple candidates within the u.s are under consideration however no decision has been made at this time samsung is calling the expansion project silicon silver and it appears samsung is loosely targeting quarter 424 for a completion date and this is assuming it does partner with texas no word yet on exactly what process technology would be used at the new site but samsung's new mbc fets are a safe bet finally a couple of smaller quick news items so chrome is ditching old cpus and isp is expressing their concern of the new competing starlink solution we'll start with chrome so chromium developers have issued a notification that google chrome will be dropping support shortly for uh older cpus by way of assuming sse3 on the cpu's running chrome going forward that's supplemental streaming sim d extensions 3. that'll be an x86 chrome build and uh starts with chrome 89 what this means is that if you have an older cpu like really old like 2000's old then it's likely that chrome and potentially other chromium apps will crash or stop working on that machine without some sort of compatibility mode as the change document notes sse2 was introduced back on intel x86 cpus in 2000 and it came out on amd cpus uh shortly after in 2003 for their x86 cpus and furthermore sse3 was introduced on intel cpus in about 2003 and it was introduced conveniently right when amd caught up with sc2 and it was introduced on amd cpus in 2005. the document also notes that until such a time that sse3 is officially required chrome will warn impacted users moving on isps are becoming increasingly alarmed about starlink spacex's satellite internet service that's currently in public beta in a study that was commissioned by fiber broadband association with the fba and the rural broadband association it's alleged that starlink will fall short of fcc deployment goals as required by the rural digital opportunity fund or what we're going to call rudolph and as also required by the fcc starlink was awarded almost 886 million dollars from the rudolph paid out over 10 years and that was to connect 642 925 homes and businesses in 35 states with 100 megabit per second download and 20 megabits per second to upload speeds the funding is dependent on certain milestones and the report alleges that starlink will run into capacity shortfall or fail to deliver enough bandwidth by 2028. the report claims further that given certain assumptions and model scenarios 56 to 57 of rudolph subscribers may not receive enough bandwidth to avoid service degradation during peak hours and further unsurprisingly the report urges the fcc to reconsider whether starlink is deserving of these funds because potentially that's money that could go back into the pool for existing isps to then misuse in their own unique ways obviously traditional isps cable dsl and fiber would love to see more of that rudolph money go back into the pool as ours technica points out traditional isps routinely fall short of fcc and art off requirements centurylink and frontier were two recent examples that were pointed out the fcc will review the study but it seems unlikely at this point that the report will convince the fcc to hesitate giving money to what may be the best option for users in general but especially rural users in the years so that's it for hardware news for at least this episode check back as always for more we have some xbox and console content we've also got uh the arctic liquid freezer 2 420 millimeter liquid cooler coming up in a review shortly that's filmed and getting edited and plenty more so subscribe for that you can go to store.gamersnexus.net to help us out directly patreon.comgamersnexus if you want access to the latest patrons ask dan episode thanks for watching we'll see you all next timewelcome back to the hardware news recap for the week in this one we'll be talking about linux focus from amd andy is hiring for several linux focused positions in engineering and management and it looks like it's related to cpus especially on the client side so some job listings will go over there there's a renewed interest in silicon fabrication expansion in the us specifically by amd nvidia and intel all the big three signing the same letter together proposing to the u.s government that they would like some funding to expand silicon manufacturing and fabrication in the u.s intel and rocket lake news cyberpunk's source code leak and a couple of other news stories before that this video is sponsored by linode lynnote is a linux server hosting provider that gn has used for nearly a decade now for its own servers alongside dedicated website hosting linux makes it easy to cut out third-party vpn services to build your own vpn that you fully control easily configured via the interface lenoda also has hundreds of guides for custom servers including game server apps like rust minecraft cs go and guides to host your own video calling servers to eliminate third parties linux is a great way to take back control of software and your hosting and gamers nexus viewers get a 100 credit for 60 days on new accounts at leno.com gamersnexus or click the link below this is going to be a really dense news video there's a lot to go over for this one so it's been a good week for news amd nvidia intel and a lot of other silicon companies wanting to expand us-based fabrication and manufacturing this will be our first story so the big three plus about 98 of the other semiconductor manufacturers joining together in the silicon alliance to propose to the u.s government that they are seeking grants and tax subsidies or cuts in order to help finance the expansion of fabrication most notably the letter to the u.s government included signatures from lisa sue from andy ceo there the current outgoing bob swann from intel will be replaced soon by pat gelsinger and then on nvidia's side the specific person wasn't named but nvidia executive leadership potentially jensen juan or others in the c suite from nvidia signing this letter to the us government so joining all of these ceos together we can create a super ceo a voltron of silicon ceos if you will and with this voltron of silicon ceos you end up with a letter that is specifically noting to the government that the costs of inaction are high that's the quote and as for why these 100 billion plus dollar companies in some instances want assistance it's because silicon fabrication plants are highly sophisticated facilities they cost billions and billions of dollars to build and they require skilled work intel has published many factory floor videos showing how its silicon wafers are processed diced and turned into cpus for instance and this puts into perspective the one the land size that's required and then two the level of engineering required to make the building even operate because silicon is at the heart of the military and government devices countries are now becoming more concerned about where that silicon is being made of course domestic manufacturing would also benefit the companies involved all three of these have headquarters in the u.s in california specifically they score more government contracts for chips and they can also help fund multi-billion dollar fabrication facilities which would be useful for product distribution distribution of fab space and consumption and overall leveling the logistics to be spread out across more uh continents the executives note that the us currently holds 12 percent of silicon fabrication capabilities which is a 25 point drop from the 90s when it was in the 37 percent range the letter said the following quote as a result the us is uncompetitive in attracting investments in new fab construction and our technology leadership is at risk in the race for preeminence in the technologies of the future including artificial intelligence 5g or 6g and quantum computing regardless of where the manufacturing ends up it's clear that the world needs more fabrication facilities and the my numbers are dated but back several years ago when we ran a story on fabrication plants what they cost most of those facilities that we were talking about at the time were in the five six billion dollar range just for the components we were talking about and they've become a lot more advanced over the years so for example tsmc is currently seeking a nine billion dollar investment in a new branch of its own fabrication in japan and that expansion is still seeking funding but it gives an idea for the pure upstart cost an awesome idea for why it's not so easy to just start competing with these companies even if you have the engineering talent or the architectural talent and also why third parties like tsmc have done so well because now you let them take the cost and you sort of amortize it over the production of your chips so that's the plans for silicon manufacturing expansion this is particularly interesting because the past year has demonstrated that a major demand shift or surge out of nowhere like in the past year now completely upends not just the computer market but nearly every market cars have computers in them now and a couple weeks ago we reported on a story about how car manufacturing was brought to a halt because the manufacturers affected like audi and ford for example were incapable of getting chips for the production of those vehicles and so this is clearly more manufacturing capabilities are needed anyway next up amd is building out its linux team so uh this was spotted by or at least we found it on pharonix and it's written by michael larabel phronix first of all is a site we're happy to recommend for its linux benchmarking if you're ever curious about how cpus and gpus perform in linux specifically they do a lot of stuff that we do except hours is focused on windows and they look at the linux side of things really good coverage definitely check it out but pharonix saw that amd is hiring for its team of linux developers and he currently has job listings on its site if you want to apply there's a there's a button right there on the page you can apply now for them and the jobs include engineering jobs uh technical points of contact and liaisons architects and management positions specifically andy has job listings for a linux kernel development manager and these careers page describes this as a mentor to the team of developers and says that this person would enable the design and implementation of linux operating system features supporting amd cpus the job lists responsibilities as including management of an engineering team quote in the area of linux kernel and kvm virtualization development another job listing on amd's page included linux engineering for client devices this is defined as quote a key engineer on our team who configures and tunes linux distribution packages to take advantage of andy technologies on customer platforms amd says this role would participate in planning next generation cpus and apus as well additionally notable the jobs page is seeking a linux architect in the client group with a job role requiring collaboration with silicon architects so that would be your cpu fellows and architects and gpu rtg side to plan features and platform needs amd's been making a big push in server where it gained half a point of market share which is a big deal for the company and server mostly runs linux still these days and and will continue to do so so there could be some of that here but several of these listings specifically point out client client group client devices and uh that would be more consumer facing stuff potentially biz client business client if they are thinking of small business customers for example or uh large businesses too so this could be useful for continuing these portions of server but it is specifically client that's called out and it's likely that this is at least partially attached to oems potentially portables when talking about things like customer platforms up next updates on today project threads uh twitter post that they did talking about unauthorized access to servers for cdpr where apparently cyberpunk 2077 the witcher 3 an unreleased version of the witcher 3 gwent and potentially some other games on source code all had been obtained by a third-party unauthorized agent i.e hacker and following this up just within a couple days or so about a week max there was an auction that eventually led to a direct sale of the source code dump to an undisclosed buyer at this time if you missed cdpr's initial statement it was posted on twitter it's been an unfortunate sequence of months for cdpr at this point but the company in between working on hot fixes and a major update 1.1 for cyberpunk 2777 now had to deal with this and the hack included also financial documents hr documents and internal information investor information cdpr was quick to note that it did not have any reason to suspect at the time that any customer personal information had been leaked from the hacked servers and unauthorized access as for who bought it we don't know it's in theory any kind of corporate espionage in most countries is is varying degrees of illegal from pretty illegal to very illegal those are technical terms but it's possible that you could have something like a consortium of investors or cdpr itself via an unknown entity to protect its own code cdpr publicly said that it wasn't interested in negotiating with the hackers and that would not pay for its own code back uh effectively its servers were being held at ransom as well but cdpr said that it rolled back the servers to a previous update and was able to resolve this the readme file that the hacker allegedly left on the cdpr servers said that it knew that cdpr would probably roll the servers back via a backup and would regain access to them but noted that it's its primary goal was to sell the data that was compromised the readme file that was shared by cdpr also said something along the lines of uh reputation going down the drain as a result of this and that is why we'd like to just quickly bring up one of the tweets we saw in the thread responding to cdpr where someone said isn't it convenient that right now the server gets hacked so that they can push back updates to the game no no that's that's the opposite of convenient and uh it is genuinely one of the stupidest conspiracy theories i've seen about video games so none of that makes sense cdpr would not benefit from saying hmm we need to delay our updates what if we say all of our data was hacked that seems better no that that doesn't make sense anyway uh there might be more information on this but for now it looks like it was sold to an undisclosed buyer and everything will probably go quiet if there's any kind of contract in place but that's the news on on cyberpunk 2077. laptop mining farms are a thing this is sort of interesting in a uh a scary way it looks like a fire waiting to happen although ndxt didn't make any of the laptops there so in what largely appears to be an effort to circumvent gpu discreet card shortages there have been some photos popping up online especially on weibo and chinese social media showing laptop mining farms and a couple on twitter as well with videos showing laptops propped up like tents stacked on shelves handing off of rails and uh some units have even been partially disassembled to allow for better airflow you may be aware that laptops have recently had updates from nvidia with the rtx 30 series coming out and over the last week or so reports have streamed in regarding cryptocurrency miners in china buying up rtx 30 series laptops in bulk for the express purpose of mining ethereum ethereum like btc has been on the rise for months now and it spurs many prospective miners to get as much hashing horsepower as possible wayboy user btcr and twitter user harukaze posted photos and images showing laptops propped up we also noticed in these photos that several of the laptops shown precariously standing in a room with innocent wallpaper depicting dolphins had their batteries removed we assume this is a fire safety choice given the explosive nature of compromised lithium the laptops also share just two visible surge protectors on the news of fire safety with one alone hosting about five to six laptops rtx 30 gpus have been especially popular about ethereum miners but even the mobile skus fare pretty well one content creator made a video where she took her rtx 3060 equipped laptop to a local starbucks and within two hours had allegedly mined enough ethereum to pay for a cup of coffee if it's starbucks we'd we'd assume that cup was about the size of a thimble but the point still stamped it seems that most of the laptops being bought in china are equipped with rtx 3070 or 3060s shown in these photos at least and many of the laptops have come from uh hasi is the english name i'm actually not sure how to pronounce that so it's shen jo tien now and it's one of china's largest computer manufacturers they have several laptop models with rtx 30 series gpus and you can see several of those in the photos that were posted on twitter and wave up next some hardware products news we actually just bought this this is gelid's protection bracket it's cpu protection bracket for amd pga cpus so many of you who've had experience at least removing an amd cpu know that you need to do a good amount of wiggling of the cooler on top of the cpu to loosen the thermal paste and make sure it doesn't end up getting sucked up with the cooler when you remove it and although this isn't too hard to avoid it's annoying enough that if you're doing a lot of socking and unsocking like we do for a certain testing it might be useful to have a bracket that holds the cpu in place this is it looks to be a metal bracket it cost us a dollar fifty when we bought it and it'll be here soon but it's used with socket m4 it simply clamps down secures down over the substrate of the cpu so it does not contact the ihs and then it has four holes where it can connect to whatever mounting mechanism you have for your cpu cooler now presumably this should work with most coolers but a couple downsides here with gelad's cpu protection bracket one is that it will influence the amount of pressure or torque that can be applied on each screw and could influence how the mounting solution comes together once it's all said and done just because you're inserting maybe a one mil thick piece of metal in there we don't have it in hand yet it's brand new it just came out but uh but we'll take a look at that whether we cover it or not not sure yet it depends how interesting it is but the bracket is supposed to basically just keep the cpu in place when you pull the cooler off very simple straightforward we've covered things like this in the past there were a couple that popped up on aliexpress before and this is the first one we were picking up just because we could potentially use something like this depending on again how much it influences the cooler context so that's new from gallaud it's on their site if you're interested in looking into it a dollar fifty what's the price for that one up next uh intel suing a former employee for theft of confidential files and uh for allegedly violating trade secrets so according to intel and court documents filed in the u.s district court in portland oregon intel is suing a former employee by the name of dr gupta and those court documents suggest that gupta was a former product marketing engineer who worked at intel for 10 years before departing from microsoft in january 2020 the suit alleges that the employee had access to confidential intel files during tenure with the company and that those files 3 900 of them were transferred from the intel issued laptop to a pair of thumb drives on the employees last day the files in question are related to how intel customizes and prices its various xeon cpus quote throughout the course of his employment the employee had direct access to documents containing intel confidential information and trade secrets relating to intel's pricing structure and strategies definition of the parameters and manufacturing capabilities for customized xeon processors among other intel confidential information and trade secrets as for why this particular information is a big deal intel alleges that it would allow companies like microsoft for example who end up hiring this person uh or other companies who come into contact with the information the ability to leverage an unfair advantage in negotiating prices down for its xeon products so intel put it as follows they said quote as a purchaser of intel's processors microsoft's rational objective would be to negotiate the most advanced technical features at the lowest achievable price the former employee knew intel's confidential technical and manufacturing capabilities customized product offerings marketing strategies and pricing for xeon processors and used that confidential information and trade secrets to gain an unfair advantage over intel in the negotiations concerning product specifications and pricing for his parts the employee seems to partially deny the claims alleging that only one usb drive exists not two and that the drive was surrendered to microsoft for analysis intel notes and its filings that microsoft has aided in the investigation and forensic analysis and that dr gupta has accessed the stolen files multiple times throughout his employment at microsoft in terms of its objectives intel is seeking 75 000 in damages it's seeking legal fees and it's also looking to bar use of any of that confidential information obviously that's the whole point of all of this we've actually covered corporate espionage stories in the past where micron in particular was the center of one of these where there were employees being traded around or hired by competing companies and it seemed like the the premise of most of those cases were much like this one where a new employer just happens to hire an employee who happens to bring with them a drive full of documents that could be useful to the competitor in this case it's not a competitor it's more of a partner but this is something that's popped up in the hardware industry a couple times over the last few years up next intel's roger kadori is again making headlines this time teasing the intel xe hpg gpu which is uh intel's eventual enthusiast gaming gpu it was running a 3dmark benchmark previously we covered kodori's teasing of a die shot for the seven nanometer xehpc solution that we believe will eventually take the form of pontivechio and qatari is back at it this time again with hpg so the test was an unreleased 3dmark benchmark that's a new shader mesh feature test we suspect this is the xe hpg dg2 variant which would be the dgpu counterpart to the lower end dg1 there isn't much to glean from the tweet other than intel's testing and development for xe hpg must be well underway if it's already being tested in 3dmark this could also bode well for rumors of a late 2021 or early 2022 release speculation isn't worth much but talk online seems to suggest intel targeting performance somewhere between the 30 70 and an rx 6800 but again that's based on very little the gpu should come with current marquee features like ray tracing support gddr6 memory and we know it'll be manufactured outside of intel likely on one of tsmc or samsung's nodes kodori's post also shows the upper and lower deck of the silicon that's because this uses intel's multi-layered packaging approach that it detailed with favaros previously some marked sections show 7 nanometer and 10 nanometer superfin silicon side by side and this is the unique feature for intel's approach also in intel news this time for intel desktop cpu so rocket lake s is coming out in march probably from what it looks like right now later will be alder lake but rocket lake s should be intel's last batch of 14 nanometer skylake derived silicon before finally moving on with alder lake s on intel's 10 nanometer superfin later this year in theory so rocket league s is supposed to be back ported cypress cove architecture and as intel is want to do it's already axing support for lower tier motherboards as it relates to rocket lake ass compatibility an updated support document regarding bios updates for upcoming 11th gen cpus states that b460 and h410 chipsets will not see support for the new chips but z490 has already been known for a while now to support them the document also addresses that z490 and h470 based boards will likely require a bios update to boot with rocket lake s this is fairly routine when new processors get dropped into existing boards and isn't really a surprise as for rocket like support it seems the upgrade pathway for owners of b460 or h410 is to either move to z490 or h470 or shell out for a 500 series board which are slowly coming out to market both options are a dead end considering alder lake will introduce a new lga 1700 socket though earlier we talked about the silicon manufacturing uptick in fabrication plants in the u.s or just in general and japan for example with csmc and continuing in that topic samsung is looking to expand its us-based semiconductor manufacturing operations it's looking at austin texas it's also looking at several other potential host states including arizona and new york so samsung already has one manufacturing facility stateside that is the s2 fab based in austin texas the s2 plant mostly deals with older process nodes all of samsung's newest process nodes and leading technology are in south korea over the last few years the u.s has slowly been cranking up pressure on semiconductor manufacturers and vice versa to bring more production over a state site tsmc has already announced plans for a 12 billion plant in arizona tsmc's future arizona location will initially focus on five nanometers but will likely also ctsmc's future nodes as well being that tsmc is already putting five nanometer chips out if all goes to plans tsmc should have an arizona plan to come online in 2024. of course samsung doesn't want to be left out and so it's expanding its north american operation right now it seems samsung is in the courting phase as it chooses which state will offer it the most resources and financial incentives according to the austin statesman samsung is seeking incentives and subsidized breaks worth more than one billion dollars from texas samsung says that in return its facility would be 7 million square feet to double check that and would create apparently 1800 jobs it says the new fab if located in austin would be close to the existing s2 fab that samsung has there and it would cost more than 17 billion dollars all totaled according to documents filed with texas samsung is seeking a state that can provide it access to talent it's also looking for a state that has access to an existing manufacturing supply ecosystem too bad there's not a dating app for silicon fabrication manufacturers so this is the the plan right now but it's still looking at different states samsung is seeking a high speed to market it wants a what it says is a strong private public relationship with the city and the state that it would be located in and samsung's current plans based on the documents would not move any r d to the u.s and would only consist of manufacturing based on various factors we're reviewing the possibility of expanding our semiconductor manufacturing facilities a number of global locations including multiple candidates within the u.s are under consideration however no decision has been made at this time samsung is calling the expansion project silicon silver and it appears samsung is loosely targeting quarter 424 for a completion date and this is assuming it does partner with texas no word yet on exactly what process technology would be used at the new site but samsung's new mbc fets are a safe bet finally a couple of smaller quick news items so chrome is ditching old cpus and isp is expressing their concern of the new competing starlink solution we'll start with chrome so chromium developers have issued a notification that google chrome will be dropping support shortly for uh older cpus by way of assuming sse3 on the cpu's running chrome going forward that's supplemental streaming sim d extensions 3. that'll be an x86 chrome build and uh starts with chrome 89 what this means is that if you have an older cpu like really old like 2000's old then it's likely that chrome and potentially other chromium apps will crash or stop working on that machine without some sort of compatibility mode as the change document notes sse2 was introduced back on intel x86 cpus in 2000 and it came out on amd cpus uh shortly after in 2003 for their x86 cpus and furthermore sse3 was introduced on intel cpus in about 2003 and it was introduced conveniently right when amd caught up with sc2 and it was introduced on amd cpus in 2005. the document also notes that until such a time that sse3 is officially required chrome will warn impacted users moving on isps are becoming increasingly alarmed about starlink spacex's satellite internet service that's currently in public beta in a study that was commissioned by fiber broadband association with the fba and the rural broadband association it's alleged that starlink will fall short of fcc deployment goals as required by the rural digital opportunity fund or what we're going to call rudolph and as also required by the fcc starlink was awarded almost 886 million dollars from the rudolph paid out over 10 years and that was to connect 642 925 homes and businesses in 35 states with 100 megabit per second download and 20 megabits per second to upload speeds the funding is dependent on certain milestones and the report alleges that starlink will run into capacity shortfall or fail to deliver enough bandwidth by 2028. the report claims further that given certain assumptions and model scenarios 56 to 57 of rudolph subscribers may not receive enough bandwidth to avoid service degradation during peak hours and further unsurprisingly the report urges the fcc to reconsider whether starlink is deserving of these funds because potentially that's money that could go back into the pool for existing isps to then misuse in their own unique ways obviously traditional isps cable dsl and fiber would love to see more of that rudolph money go back into the pool as ours technica points out traditional isps routinely fall short of fcc and art off requirements centurylink and frontier were two recent examples that were pointed out the fcc will review the study but it seems unlikely at this point that the report will convince the fcc to hesitate giving money to what may be the best option for users in general but especially rural users in the years so that's it for hardware news for at least this episode check back as always for more we have some xbox and console content we've also got uh the arctic liquid freezer 2 420 millimeter liquid cooler coming up in a review shortly that's filmed and getting edited and plenty more so subscribe for that you can go to store.gamersnexus.net to help us out directly patreon.comgamersnexus if you want access to the latest patrons ask dan episode thanks for watching we'll see you all next time\n"