Esports has come a long way: from high-score chasing, to the Battle By the Bay, the World Cyber Games, and much more. It wasn’t until the 2010s that the legitimacy and ubiquity of esports reached a fevered pitch, with studios chasing after this market and the push to give esports as big of a profile as traditional sports. But as I looked at genres like fighting and RTS, I started to think about whether esports has helped or hurt game development.

The Intended Effect

Esports and live service have gone together since the 2000s and the rise of League of Legends. The idea was that by creating an esport, a game would become popular outside of just playing the game; people would follow the esport and sponsors could sell ad revenue. There has always been this dream in the US to have esports reach the same level of recognition and impact that we saw in South Korea with StarCraft.

By continuing to support a game with more content, it would mean people would spend money on said content, and more support would keep a game going for years. When you look at the big successes — LoL, CS: GO, Rainbow Six: Siege, and so on – it does turn into that. For multiplayer, it has been a godsend in terms of keeping these games relevant and playable for years thanks to people continuing to play for the competitive side. This symbiotic relationship has been the envy of publishers and developers who all tried to make their own take on these games, as we saw with the numerous battle royales, MOBAs, shooters, and so on. And while esports has been good to these games it hasn’t been good to the health of these genres.

The problem is that making an esport and making a marketable game might not be as compatible as you think.

Making an Esport

Esport design is different from the traditional design and mechanics we see in other games. When you are building an esport, you must focus on the competitive side — all map design, all balancing, all future content, must be built around what the competitive people want to see. This has been the driving factor for fighting games for years and was part of what led to the decline of traditional RTS games in the mainstream in favor of MOBAs.

An esport is all about “the match” and everything that isn’t related to it is seen as fluff to the competitive side.

Matches are meant to be as balanced as possible and favor player skill above all else. With every esport game mentioned in this piece, you’ll find very little content outside of that. For the games that do add in single-player or story content, with rare exceptions (that I’ll come back to below), it is kept minimal and seems like something added to check off a list.

Casual vs. Competitive

When we look at games and genres that have gone out of their way to be the next esport, it’s time to face an important truth: esports suck the fun out of those games. From a community standpoint, some of the worst games imaginable, with regard to community management and moderation, are from the esports side. You have those who send horrible messages to other players, players who look down on everyone else, and reports of corruption and cheating from time to time.

From an onboarding and UI/UX point of view, these games are ineffective at providing accommodations and educating new players on how to play competitively. When it comes to the importance of UI/UX design, esports games fail this test time after time, and a lot of it comes down to their player base, specifically the esports side. Just as single-player gamers often fail to understand the difference between complexity and depth, so do a lot of multiplayer fans. Some immediately fume the second someone wants to change a game to make it easier to play or modernize it for audiences today, as we saw with the modern controls debate from Street Fighter 6. The problem is that teaching someone how to play against an AI is not the same as teaching them how to fight another player. For games that introduce new rules and mechanics, onboarding and tutorials may never cover those advanced elements.

In the last section I mentioned that esports players tend to focus on match design and match balancing above all else, however, the “else” in this regard is what attracts people to play these games in the first place. An esports player wants something that is consistent across however many matches they tend to play over the game’s lifespan and this is also why progression, outside elements, or those that don’t fit within the match are viewed as negatives. For everyone else, this kind of stuff is what makes these games appealing. Something I wrote about in my RTS book with unit design is that at the end of the day, cool trumps balance. Are the different factions in the Command & Conquer universe or the races in StarCraft 2 perfectly balanced? Heck no, and any self-respecting fan would say the same.

Keeping with StarCraft 2, it's the only game I can think of that came out with a fully supported esports model with its competitive play and a completely original campaign for each faction featuring unique units and progression not seen anywhere else. This is in line with how NetherRealm Studios revitalized the fighting game genre in the late 2000s by focusing on content for people who have no interest in the competitive side.

Esports players, no matter how much money gets thrown at sponsorships and tournaments, represent a fraction, of a fraction, of a fraction, of your consumer base, and it's why only catering to them does not keep a game financially afloat.

Where the Money Comes and Goes

Live service game design is all about money coming in and going out in a continuous cycle. If you’re not creating new content, money stops coming in, which means no more budget to create new content. And if you’re not creating “attractive” content for people to buy, then you are just wasting development time and money.

The issue with catering only to esports players with your game’s content and growth is that it doesn’t leave room for anyone else to keep playing. You’ll see this with any competitively-driven game — the first month or two will have peak player counts with new players trying to learn the game and see if it works for them. And then, without fail, those numbers plummet and the people who stick around are just the competitive side or those trying to be competitive.

This group only cares about one thing: content that plays into the competitive side of the game. Anything else is not of interest to them, and if you think new cosmetics are going to be enough to bring casual players back, that’s not going to work. To that point, trying to create new game modes, new mechanics, or anything that runs counter to the esports/competitive side will be met with angry esports players, and still may not be enough to get people to come back. Blizzard’s strategy of splitting StarCraft 2 down the middle between the competitive and casual sides with its content was a brilliant move. Conversely, trying to shoehorn competitive and casual together is what doomed Command & Conquer 4.

The problem with trying to cater to an esports market is that instead of being able to grow your game with new content and interest over the months and years, it starts to shrink. Once a game’s audience becomes fixed like this, no one new is going to join, and if they do, chances are they won’t stay long. If players feel like they are just there to be served up to the expert players, they will leave even faster, as Activision’s report on Skill-Based Matchmaking covers in detail.

The Better Live Service

Some of the most popular live service games today come from the mobile space and are as far away from competitive experiences as a game could get. Creating attractive content for a live service game requires making sure that all segments of your audience can experience it. If there are new missions, storylines, etc., then they should be accessible to all groups. For bonus challenges or limited-time events, there needs to be content for each group of players.

Whenever there is content that only one group of players can use or will support, it’s going to push the other ones away; you need as wide of a consumer base as possible if you want your game to keep growing.

What Is the Future of Esports?

Esports is in a very awkward place now; it’s no longer the new thing on the market, and tournaments like the LoL Championship Series and EVO have reached the mainstream, but prospects for continued growth are debatable. Part of the problem is that it’s not about organically making a game an esport, where the process would look like this:

1. The game comes out
2. People like to play it
3. Tournaments are developed
4. The game becomes an esport

Now, many developers and publishers are chasing the market to will their games to become an esport. The ones that specifically are built for esport players are not finding a market outside of just those players.

Just as the RTS genre needs to have a hard talk about modernizing and appealing to more people, the fighting genre needs a similar one.

Despite how many copies Street Fighter 6 sold and how popular it was, less than half the player base on PC tried a multiplayer match. Designing additional content for mainstream and non-competitive players has helped, but it doesn’t fix the inherent problem of trying to get someone who isn’t a pro player interested in playing a game designed around that mindset.

What do you think: Is esports going to keep growing, or has it reached its limits?

Rocksteady’s Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League was recently available for free on Amazon, so I decided to give it a try. Overall, it was a fun comic book romp, and I think it could have easily become a beloved franchise if not for the cascading ramifications of its live service trappings. These are my speculations as to how live service shaped its game design, and why some people believe it is responsible for killing the Suicide Squad (SS).

One of the main criticisms I saw floating around was why all these iconic characters like King Shark and Captain BOOMERANG were given guns instead of unique combat styles. The financial incentive to keep players coming back for a live service model demands infinite scalability. A loot system based around guns is easy to make, can be given to any character, and can be infused with any number of stats and mods. It broadens the build variety, but the consequence is a homogenization of the individual traits that make each SS character interesting. It's a particular shame considering how different all their traversal styles feel.

This homogenization consequently affects enemy design, requiring all of them to be killable with guns. So despite the enemies' various gimmicks, your strategy ultimately doesn’t change very much no matter who you're playing. This lack of necessity in dealing with your foes is a sobering contrast to Rocksteady’s previous Arkham games, and even Guardians of the Galaxy, which had you coordinating with your squad to overcome certain foes.

The talent trees alleviate some of this uniformity to encourage certain play styles. Since the game is online co-op, I imagine Rocksteady wanted players to create unique versions of each character. One player's Harley might be a "Run-and-Gunner," while another might be a "Slugger", a decision that thematically fits with the narrative of multiple (Elseworld) dimensions.

The financial incentive to keep players coming back for a live service model demands infinite scalability.

However, the talents still need to exist within the framework of the gunplay and live service model, which pumps out seasonal content in the form of new weapons and mods. Designing talents to be future-proof is no easy task, requiring a very rigid structure (see homogenization). The result is a lot of passive talents, further obfuscated by its dependence on a combo meter to activate. This makes it difficult to capitalize on or feel empowered by your talent choices.

While I feel the decision to include co-op was a bold and worthy pursuit, the homogenized gameplay and unimpressive talents across all characters don't fulfill the fantasy of making a character your own. This is further exacerbated by the requirements of a single-character/co-op shooter where players have to feel self-reliant. There can’t be “puzzles” that only one character can solve. All of this combined fundamentally detracts from the appeal of an SS game about a found family covering for each other’s weaknesses. There's a very clear mismatch with the thematic goals that should have driven the game, versus the retention model of the live service genre.

While I feel the decision to include co-op was a bold and worthy pursuit, the homogenized gameplay and unimpressive talents across all characters don't fulfill the fantasy of making a character your own.

Ironically, SS’s best feature — its traversal – is also its least synergistic. It makes gunplay frenetic, with enemies occupying huge vertical swathes of the environment. It makes your proximity to your team unpredictable, which is probably why there are no team-up actions in the game. And I assume it made the camera finicky in interior spaces, which forced all the gameplay to occur outside. Who knows if traversal dictated mission design or vice versa, but the live service model necessitated a structure that could be repeatedly used anywhere. So they embraced the outdoor gameplay, where any and all objectives could spawn on rooftops no matter what district or dimension you’re in. The resulting lack of mission diversity is abundantly felt in a Metropolis that doesn’t feel lived in and is just a forgettable transitory space to move between repetitive tasks.

While mission modifiers are fun, you expect bespoke experiences from a premium game, especially when the Justice League is concerned! Rocksteady’s Arkham series blended the scale of gameplay brilliantly, from soaring over Gotham to entering a parlor on street level to confront Professor Pyg. That artistry in crafting memorable gameplay moments stems from its inherently singular nature — and nothing in a live service game can be made to be singular. (Except its cutscenes which are a definite standout here.)

A co-op blend of Sunset Overdrive and Doom Eternal sounds like a home-run concept, but the additional factor of a squad, filled with iconic characters in their own right, goes wholly unutilized. The unfortunate decision to pursue live service cornered Rocksteady into creating a rote structure that they’re now caged in when the universe of SS called for bombastic set pieces.

Blacknut Cloud Gaming has announced a new distribution agreement with Ubisoft.

Starting from this month, "a series of Ubisoft offerings" will join Blacknut's platform, which "allows players to access over 500+ premium games via streaming under a single subscription with no lock-in contract."

Ubisoft – which owns cloud rights to current and new Activision games over the next 15 years – confirms that franchises coming to Blacknut include Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, Anno, and Rayman.

Read more

Digital Extremes CEO Steve Sinclair has spoken out about live-service games and his belief that publishers hit "eject too soon" when their games fail to gain traction at launch.

In an interview with VGC, Sinclair – who heads the studio developing 11-year-old free-to-play live-service shooter, Warframe – talked frankly about live-service projects, saying games with "massive potential" have been abandoned too soon because they weren't given enough time.

"[Large game companies] think the release is make or break, and it's not," Sinclair said.

Read more

Less than a month after the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump, the agency that failed to protect him from harm may get a bigger budget.

On July 13, when Thomas Matthew Crooks shot and wounded Trump during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, Secret Service agents sprang into action, heroically shielding him from further harm and escorting him from the stage.

But subsequent reporting revealed that the incident was entirely preventable: Rally attendees alerted law enforcement to the presence of a suspicious person more than an hour before he started shooting, and they later saw him climbing on top of a building with a gun. "Trump was on stage for around 10 minutes between the moment Crooks was spotted on the roof with a gun and the moment he fired his first shot," the BBC reported.

After a particularly disastrous appearance before the House Oversight Committee, Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned. Appearing before two Senate committees this week, acting Director Ronald Rowe Jr. testified that he was "ashamed" of the agency's failure.

Almost immediately after the shooting, a narrative emerged that the lapse owed to a lack of resources.

At a July 15 White House press briefing, a reporter asked Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas of the Department of Homeland Security—which oversees the Secret Service—"Is the Secret Service stretched too thin?"

"The Secret Service in—in times like this calls upon other resources and capabilities to handle a—a campaign of this magnitude," Mayorkas replied. "And I do intend to speak with members of the Hill with respect to the resources that we need."

"Our agency needs to be adequately resourced in order to serve our current mission requirements and to anticipate future requirements," Cheatle noted in her opening testimony before the House Oversight Committee on July 22. "As of today, the Secret Service has just over 8,000 employees," she told Rep. Stephen Lynch (D–Mass.). "We are still striving toward a number of 9,500 employees, approximately, in order to be able to meet future and emerging needs."

In a letter to Rowe this week, Sens. Chris Murphy (D–Conn.) and Katie Britt (R–Ala.)—respectively the chairman and the ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security—sought to understand the agency's financial needs as the subcommittee drafts an appropriations bill.

"Congress provided more than $190 million to the Secret Service in Fiscal Year 2024, specifically for protection requirements related to the 2024 presidential campaign, plus an additional $22 million above President Biden's budget request for protection-related travel costs," the senators wrote. "Despite this increase, in mid-June, prior to the attempted assassination, the Secret Service submitted a reprogramming notification to our subcommittee detailing its intent to shift $19 million to cover a shortfall for protection-related travel funding." This was in addition to the imminent addition of two vice presidential candidates and their families to the agency's protective purview, plus independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom President Joe Biden added to the list after the shooting.

"As a result, the Secret Service is assuming new protection costs related to the campaign at a time when it already appears to lack sufficient resources to fulfill its protective mission," the senators continue.

But it's not at all clear that a lack of resources was the issue: The agency's budget in real numbers grew 55 percent over the last decade, to $3.62 billion, and its work force grew 33 percent from 2002 to 2019.

It is possible the agency may be stretched thin in its duties: The Secret Service is tasked by law with protecting not only the president, vice president, and their immediate families, but also former presidents, vice presidents, and their spouses for life, and their children until age 16. They also protect visiting heads of state and "other distinguished foreign visitors to the United States and official representatives of the United States performing special missions abroad when the President directs that such protection be provided."

"The Secret Service currently protects 36 individuals on a daily basis, as well as world leaders who visit the United States," Cheatle told the House Oversight Committee.

But that's not the agency's only job: Agents are tasked with investigating a number of financial crimes like counterfeiting, money laundering, and identity theft, as well as ransomware attacks, botnets, and "online sexual exploitation and abuse by predators and other criminals, sometimes for financial gain."

It's possible that the Secret Service is doing too many jobs for the amount of resources it enjoys. Perhaps many of its financial and investigative tasks should be shifted to the U.S. Treasury Department, which is where the Secret Service originated before Congress added presidential protection to its plate in 1901. The numbers demonstrate that the agency's problem is not purely financial.

But it's also worth keeping in mind that government agencies, by their nature, do too much, too poorly, and for too much money. The Secret Service, for all the nobility of its mission, is no exception.

The post Secret Service May Get Even More Money After Failing To Protect Trump appeared first on Reason.com.

I have bought a hostinger minecraft server to play it with mods. In order to do so, I have to change server type. After that, change the forge version to 1.20.1 (My mod's version) and press "scan for new JARs". When finnished scanning, it only finds version 51.0.17, wich is valid for 1.21, but not for 1.20.1. What can i do to solve the problem?

I just want to play with mods, please help. I have asked ias and have talked with custommer attention service, but none of them can help me.

The exact error that apears when I try to start the server is this one: The Minecraft server stopped within 5 seconds of starting, this is not a fault with AMP - you should check your Minecraft servers log files to find out why it is unable to start.

Earlier today, Ubisoft officially unveiled Assassin’s Creed Shadows, the next big, main entry in the long-running stealth-action franchise featuring sneaky assassins and evil Templars running amok throughout history. And for the first time in a decade, Ubisoft’s popular series is skipping the PS4 and Xbox One.

Read more...

Earlier this week, tech writer and Google Ventures general partner M.G. Siegler received a late-night notification from Meta informing him that his accounts on Instagram, Threads, and Facebook had been suspended for a horrifying alleged violation that he refuses to even name. — Read the rest

The post Instagram's terrifying false positive nearly ruined a tech writer's life appeared first on Boing Boing.

Earlier this week, tech writer and Google Ventures general partner M.G. Siegler received a late-night notification from Meta informing him that his accounts on Instagram, Threads, and Facebook had been suspended for a horrifying alleged violation that he refuses to even name. — Read the rest

The post Instagram's terrifying false positive nearly ruined a tech writer's life appeared first on Boing Boing.

You've survived starvation, wolves, those rolling rock monsters, and so much more to build your perfect village in Lego Fortnite. It sure would be a shame if an evil empire rolled up and started blasting. Luckily for you, a rebel fleet is ready to back you up against the dark side of The Force.

A new Star Wars update is launching for Fortnite on May 3, and with it comes a massive expansion to Lego Fortnite. We'll investigate the crash site of an Empire vessel after it rifts into our Lego Fortnite world. There's a ramshackle rebel village that we'll help build into a Level 10. From there, we can launch assaults on Empire encampments throughout the island. All of this looks to be adding a much more focused narrative hook to the otherwise free-reign of Lego Fortnite.

This event will also include the addition of a Lego Pass. With a free track and paid track, you can unlock various structures and items by completing quests. Purchasing the premium track for 1400 V-Bucks immediately gets you Chewbacca skins for Lego Fortnite and Battle Royale. At the end of each track is a large construction unlock. For the free path, you get the Mos Eisley Marketplace. The paid path gets you the Dusty Durrr Burger Build. It combines the Star Wars aesthetic and a Fortnite classic.

Along with all the Star Wars excitement, this update also comes with a lot more Fortnite skins getting a proper Lego version. 90 skins will have new models, including Darth Vader, Krrsantan, and The Mandalorian.

Forget all the Star Wars; the biggest feature of this update is that you'll finally be able to view Lego Fortnite Quests without having to return to the Lobby. Thank the Force for that one.

The post Lego Fortnite x Star Wars crossover will let you build up your own Rebel base appeared first on Destructoid.

While the market already has more powerful gaming handhelds, Steam Deck still remains one of the popular options among gamers. It’s mostly due to the excellent support from Valve and the dedication ...

The post New Update Makes Nvidia GeForce Now Easier to Install on Steam Deck appeared first on Gizchina.com.

Cops hate being watched, no matter where they’re located.

In the United States, we’ve seen several arrests and prosecutions of journalists and citizens for daring to record public officials performing their public duties. The case law isn’t completely settled in the United States, but in most parts of the country, it’s understood the First Amendment covers these activities.

That fact hasn’t stopped cops and prosecutors from pursuing everything from obstruction charges to alleged violations of state wiretapping laws against people who hold cops accountable simply by documenting the things they do.

There’s no First Amendment in the UK. But that doesn’t mean UK law enforcement officers are free to arrest people who do nothing more than document their actions. Given this lack of built-in protection, it’s extremely surprising to see UK prosecutors admit they’re in the wrong when it comes to shielding cops from accountability efforts that don’t involve government employees.

A journalist who did nothing more than try to document a criminal investigation taking place in full view of the public has received an apology of sorts from the UK government, as Steven Morris reports for The Guardian.

The Crown Prosecution Service has admitted it was wrong to press on with a case against a news photographer arrested as he tried to lawfully take pictures at a crime scene.

Judge Walters at Swansea crown court described the case against Dimitris Legakis, which was dropped on the eve of his trial, as “disturbing” and said it seemed “the high point” of the prosecution was that a police officer “took offence” against someone whose job was to take photographs.

The journalist did nothing more than show up at the scene of a car fire last year. He attempted to document the police response, only to get arrested by UK police officers, apparently because he was the only one in the crowd operating a camera. That this later turned out to be a murder investigation (allegedly a man beat his wife to death with a hammer before setting fire to the car with her in it) doesn’t really matter. At that point, it was just a normal police response to a potentially dangerous situation.

At some point during the police response, an “altercation” between some members of the crowd began. For whatever reason, officers decided to single out the journalist as the problem. He was arrested “with considerable force” and detained for 15 hours, supposedly for assaulting a first responder and “obstructing” a police officer, despite the fact no obstruction or assault was captured by any cameras operated by responding officers. The lack of evidence was admitted by the prosecution prior to its dropping of the charges.

The trial was due to start on Tuesday but at a hearing on Monday prosecution barrister Alycia Carpanini said no evidence would be offered in the case. The barrister said it had also been decided that it was not in the public interest to pursue the obstructing a constable matter, a summary-only offence.

Asked by Judge Geraint Walters why the decision to offer no evidence had been taken on the eve of the trial, the barrister said the original statement taken from the police officer “does not coincide” with what he later said in his victim personal statement, and she said the alleged assault itself was not captured on bodycam. The judge said having read the papers in the case it seemed to him “the high point of the prosecution case” was that somebody employed as a photographer was taking pictures and a police officer “took offence” to it.

When faced with taking this case to trial, the CPS finally admitted it had no evidence. But it took a court calling this out as a bullshit “contempt of cop” prosecution for that to happen.

And while there’s a very rare apology here, it comes couched in exculpatory language that suggests the CPS was completely in the right until it was forced to admit it was completely in the wrong.

A spokeswoman said: “We take assaults on emergency workers incredibly seriously. In all cases, including those resulting from police charge, we have a duty to continually review the evidence. In a review prior to the recent hearing, we decided that there was no longer sufficient evidence to continue with the prosecution and it should be stopped. We acknowledge this should have been done sooner.”

Maybe the CPS should divert some of its resources to investigating police officers who cook up bogus charges for the sole purpose of deterring public accountability. And, very definitely, the agency employing the officers who arrested the journalist and concocted a host of criminal charges should act quickly to punish the officers involved in this potential miscarriage of justice. It shouldn’t take 15 hours of detention and the run-up to a criminal case to finally have the truth come out. Because if that’s what it takes for the government to finally admit it’s in the wrong, the harm has already been done and the chilling effect on public accountability remains intact.

That being said, it’s still a step ahead of the status quo here in the United States. Even when governments pay out settlements to people whose rights have been violated, the payments are almost always attached to legal verbiage in which the government refuses to admit any wrongdoing. At least in the case above, the government acknowledged it was at fault. And that’s something, even if the lack of consequences means CPS and the cops that provide it with cases to prosecute are free to make the same “mistakes” over and over again.

By Adam Kovac, Gregory Haley, and Liz Allan.

Cadence plans to acquire BETA CAE Systems for $1.24 billion, the latest volley in a race to sell multi-physics simulation and analysis across a broad set of customers with deep pockets. Cadence said the deal opens the door to structural analysis for the automotive, aerospace, industrial, and health care sectors. Under the terms of the agreement, 60% of the purchase would be paid in cash, and the remainder in stock.

South Korea’s National Intelligence Service reported that North Korea was targeting cyberattacks at domestic semiconductor equipment companies, using a “living off the land” approach, in which the attacker uses minimal malware to attack common applications installed on the server. That makes it more difficult to spot an attack. According to the government, “In December last year, Company A, and in February this year, Company B, had their configuration management server and security policy server hacked, respectively, and product design drawings and facility site photos were stolen.”

As the memory market goes, so goes the broader chip industry. Last quarter, and heading into early 2024, both markets began showing signs of sustainable growth. DRAM revenue jumped 29.6% in Q4 for a total of $17.46 billion. TrendForce attributed some of that to  new efforts to stockpile chips and strategic production control. NAND flash revenue was up 24.5% in Q4, with solid growth expected to continue into the first part of this year, according to TrendForce. Revenue for the sector topped $11.4 billion in Q4, and it’s expected to grow another 20% this quarter. SSD prices rebounded in Q4, as well, up 15% to $23.1 billion. Across the chip industry, sales grew 15.2% in January compared to the same period in 2023, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA). This is the largest increase since May 2022, and that trend is expected to continue throughout 2024 with double-digit growth compared to 2023.

Marvell said it is working with TSMC to develop a technology platform for the rapid deployment of analog, mixed-signal, and foundational IP. The company plans to sell both custom and commercial chiplets at 2nm.

The Dutch government is concerned that ASML, the only maker of EUV/high-NA EUV lithography equipment in the world, is considering leaving the Netherlands, according to De Telegraaf.

Quick links to more news:

Design and Power
Manufacturing and Test
Automotive and Batteries
Security
Pervasive Computing and AI
Events

Design and Power

AMD appears to have hit a roadblock with the U.S. Department of Commerce (DoC) over a new AI chip it designed for the Chinese market, as reported by Bloomberg. U.S. officials told the company the new chip is too powerful to be sold without a license.

JEDEC released its new memory standard as a free download on its website. The JESD239 Graphics Double Data Rate SGRAM can reach speeds of 192 GB/s and improve signal-to-noise ratio.

Accellera rolled out its IEEE Std. 1800‑2023 Standard for SystemVerilog—Unified Hardware Design, Specification, and Verification Language, which is now available for free download. The decision to offer it at no cost is due to Accellera’s participation in the IEEE GET Program, which was founded in 2010 with the intention of providing  open access to some standards. Accellera also announced it had approved for release the Verilog-AMS 2023 standard, which offers enhancements to analog constructs, dynamic tolerance for event control statements, and other upgrades.

Chiplets are a hot topic these days. Six industry experts discuss chiplet standards, interoperability, and the need for highly customized AI chiplets.

Optimizing EDA hardware for the cloud can shorten the time required for large and complex simulations, but not all workloads will benefit equally, and much more can be done to improve those that can.

Flex Logix is developing InferX DSP for use with existing EFLX eFPGA from 40nm to 7nm. InferX achieves about 30 times the DSP performance/mm² than eFPGA.

The number of challenges is growing in power semiconductors, just as it is in traditional chips. This tech talk looks at integrating power semiconductors with other devices, different packaging impacts, and how these devices will degrade over time.

Vultr announced it will use NVIDIA’s HGX H100 GPU clusters to expand its Seattle-based cloud data center. The company said the expansion, which will be powered by hydroelectricity, will make the facility one of the cleanest, most power efficient data centers in the country.

Amazon Web Services will expand its presence in Saudi Arabia, announcing a new $5.3 billion infrastructure region in the country that will launch in 2026. The new region will offer developers, entrepreneurs and companies access to healthcare, education and other services.

Google is teaming up with the Geneva Science and Diplomacy Anticipator (GESDA) to launch the XPRIZE Quantum Applications, with a $5 million in prizes for winners who can demonstrate ways to use quantum computing to solve real-world problems. Teams must submit a proposal that includes analysis of how long their algorithm would need to run before reaching a solution to a problem, such as improving drug development or designing new battery materials.

South Korea’s nepes corporation has turned to Siemens EDA for solutions in the development of advanced 3D-IC packages. The deal will see nepes incorporating several Siemens technologies, including the Calibre nmPlatform, Hyperlynx software and Xpedition Substrate Integrator software.

Siemens also formalized a partnership with Nuclei System Technology in which the pair of companies will work together on solution support for Nuclei’s RISC-V processor cores. The collaboration will allow clients to monitor CPU program execution in real-time via Nuclei’s RISC-V CPU Ips.

Keysight and ETS-Lindgren announced a breakthrough test solution for cellular devices using non-terrestrial networks. The solution is capable of measuring and validating the performance of both the transmitter and receiver of devices capable of supporting the network.

Nearly fifty companies raised $800 million for power electronics, data center interconnects, and more last month.

Manufacturing and Test

SEMI Europe issued a position statement to the European Union, warning against additional export controls or rules on foreign investment. SEMI argued that free trade partnerships are a better method for ensuring security than bans or restrictions.

Revenues for the top five wafer fab equipment manufacturers declined 1% YoY in 2023 to $93.5 billion, according to Counterpoint Research. The drop was attributed to weak spending on memory, inventory adjustments, and low demand in consumer electronics. The tide is changing, though.

Bruker closed two acquisitions. One involved Chemspeed Technologies, a Switzerland-based provider of automated laboratory R&D and QC workflow solutions. The second involved Phasefocus, an image processing company based in the UK.

A Swedish company, SCALINQ, released a commercially available large-scale packaging solution capable of controlling quantum devices with hundreds of qubits.

Solid Sands, a provider of testing and qualification technology for compilers and libraries, will partner with California-based Emprog to establish a representative presence in the U.S.

Automotive

Tesla halted production at its Brandenberg, Germany, gigafactory after an environmental activist group attacked an electricity pylon, reports the Guardian.

Stellantis will invest €5.6 billion (~$6.1B) in South America to support more than 40 new products, decarbonization technologies, and business opportunities.

The amount of data being collected, processed, and stored in vehicles is exploding, and so is the value of that data. That raises questions that are still not fully answered about how that data will be used, by whom, and how it will be secured.

While industry experts expect many benefits of V2X technology, technological and social hurdles to cross. But there is progress.

Infineon released its next-gen silicon carbide (SiC) MOSFET trench technology with 650V and 1,200V options improving stored energies and charges by up to 20%, ideal for power semiconductor applications such as photovoltaics, energy storage, DC EV charging, motor drives, and industrial power supplies.

Hyundai selected Ansys to supply structural simulation solutions for vehicle body system analysis, providing end-to-end, predictively accurate capabilities for virtual performance validation.

ION Mobility used the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio for styling, mechanical engineering, and electric battery pack development for its ION M1-S electric motorbike.

Ethernovia sampled a family of automotive PHY transceivers that scale from 10 Gbps to 1 Gbps over 15 meters of automotive cabling.

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) approved Waymo’s plan to expand its driverless robotaxi services to Los Angeles and other cities near San Francisco, reports Reuters.

By 2027, next-gen battery EVs (BEVs) will on average be cheaper to produce than comparable gas-powered cars, reports Gartner. But the firm noted that average cost of EV accident repair will rise by 30%, and 15% of EV companies founded in the last decade will be acquired or bankrupt.

University of California San Diego (UCSD) researchers developed a cathode material for solid-state lithium-sulfur batteries that is electrically conductive and structurally healable.

ION Storage Systems announced its anodeless and compressionless solid-state batteries (SSBs) achieved 125 cycles with under 5% capacity degradation in performance. ION has been working with the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) to test its SSB before expanding into markets such as EVs, energy storage, consumer electronics, and aerospace.

Security

Advanced process nodes and higher silicon densities are heightening DRAM’s susceptibility to Rowhammer attacks, as reduced cell spacing significantly decreases the hammer count needed for bit flips. A multi-layered, system-level approach is crucial to DRAM protection.

Researchers at Bar-Ilan University and Rafael Defense Systems proposed an analytical electromagnetic model for IC shielding against hardware attacks.

Keysight acquired the IP of Firmalyzer, whose firmware security analysis technology will be integrated into the Keysight IoT Security Assessment and Automotive Security solutions, providing analysis into what is happening inside the IoT device itself.

Flex Logix joined the Intel Foundry U.S. Military Aerospace Government (USMAG) Alliance, ensuring U.S. defense industrial base and government customers have access to the latest technology, enabling successful designs for mission critical programs.

The EU Council presidency and European Parliament reached a provisional agreement on a Cyber Solidarity Act and an amendment to the Cybersecurity Act (CSA) concerning managed security services.

The EU Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) and partners updated the compendium on elections cybersecurity in response to issues such as AI deep fakes, hacktivists-for-hire, the sophistication of threat actors, and the current geopolitical context.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) launched efforts to help secure the open source software ecosystem; updated its Public Safety Communications and Cyber Resiliency Toolkit; and issued other alerts including security advisories for VMware, Apple, and Cisco.

Pervasive Computing and AI

Johns Hopkins University engineers used natural language prompts and ChatGPT4 to produce detailed instructions to build a spiking neural network (SNN) chip. The neuromorphic accelerators could power real-time machine intelligence for next-gen embodied systems like autonomous vehicles and robots.

The global AI hardware market size was estimated at $53.71 billion in 2023, and is expected to reach about $473.53 billion by 2033, at a compound annual growth rate of 24.5%, reports Precedence Research.

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) researchers and partners built compact chips capable of converting light into microwaves, which could improve navigation, communication, and radar systems.

Fig. 1: NIST researchers test a chip for converting light into microwave signals. Pictured is the chip, which is the fluorescent panel that looks like two tiny vinyl records. The gold box to the left of the chip is the semiconductor laser that emits light to the chip. Credit: K. Palubicki/NIST

The Indian government is investing 103 billion rupees ($1.25B) in AI projects, including computing infrastructure and large language models (LLMs).

Infineon is collaborating with Qt Group, bringing Qt’s graphics framework to Infineon’s graphics-enabled TRAVEO T2G cluster MCUs to optimize graphical user interface (GUI) development.

Keysight leveraged fourth-generation AMD EPYC CPUs to develop a new benchmarking methodology to test mobile and 5G private network performance. The method uses realistic traffic generation to uncover a CPU’s true power and scalability while observing bandwidth requirements.

The AI industry is pushing a nuclear power revival, reports NBC, and Amazon bought a nuclear-powered data center in Pennsylvania from Talen Energy for $650 million, according to WNEP.

Bank of America was awarded 644 patents in 2023 for technology including information security, AI, machine learning (ML), online and mobile banking, payments, data analytics, and augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR).

Mistral AI’s large language model, Mistral Large, became available in the Snowflake Data Cloud for customers to securely harness generative AI with their enterprise data.

China’s smartphone unit sales declined 7% year over year in the first six weeks of 2024, with Apple declining 24%, reports Counterpoint.

Shipments of LCD TV panels are expected to reach 55.8 million units in Q1 2024, a 5.3% quarter over quarter increase, reports TrendForce. And an estimated 5.8 billion LED lamps and luminaires are expected to reach the end of their lifespan in 2024, triggering a wave of secondary replacements and boosting total LED lighting demand to 13.4 billion units.

Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) researchers mined high-purity gold from electrical and electronic waste.

The San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) and the University of Utah launched a National Data Platform pilot project, aimed at making access to and use of scientific data open and equitable.

Events

Find upcoming chip industry events here, including:

Upcoming webinars are here.

Further Reading and Newsletters

Read the latest special reports and top stories, or check out the latest newsletters:

Systems and Design
Low Power-High Performance
Test, Measurement and Analytics
Manufacturing, Packaging and Materials
Automotive, Security and Pervasive Computing

The post Chip Industry Week In Review appeared first on Semiconductor Engineering.

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The post Meet the "Atlanta Magnet Man" — a street cleaning hero appeared first on Boing Boing.

The west coast of California continues its drama series of winter 2024 storms as Yosemite National Park braces for "several" feet of snow by telling tourists to go now!

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The post Ahead of a huge storm, Yosemite Park Service tells tourists: GTFO appeared first on Boing Boing.

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