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Samsung accused of cheating on hardware benchmarks ... again

South Korean giant says it's in no way goosing TV HDR brightness

Brandon Vigliarolo Wed 15 Jun 2022 // 21:44 UTC

Samsung has once again been accused of cheating in benchmark tests to inflate the apparent abilities of its hardware.
The South Korean titan was said to have unfairly goosed Galaxy Note 3 phone benchmarks in 2013, and faced with similar allegations about the Galaxy S4 in 2018 settled that matter for $13.4 million.
This time Samsung has allegedly fudged the results for its televisions, specifically the S95B QD-OLED and QN95B Neo OLED LCD TVs.

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Samsung said to be sniffing around European chipmakers

Fresh out of jail on corruption charges, the company's leader goes shopping

Tobias Mann Fri 10 Jun 2022 // 11:55 UTC

Samsung vice chairman Lee Jae-yong is said to be courting Dutch chipmaker NXP on a visit to Europe to bolster the company's position in the automotive semiconductor market.
According to the Asian Tech Press, Jae-yong, who has been released on probation after serving time on corruption charges, is expected to visit several chipmakers and semiconductor manufacturing vendors including the Netherland's NXP and ASML, as well as Germany's Infineon. Press became aware of Jae-yong's plans after a Seoul Central District Court approved the vice chairman's travel plans.
NXP offers a wide array of microprocessors, power management, and wireless chips for automotive, communications, and industrial applications. However, the Asian Tech Press said Samsung's interest in the company, which is valued at approximately $56 billion, is primarily rooted in the company's automotive silicon.

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Warning: Colleagues are unusually likely to 'break' their monitors soon

Wave of replacements needed as Samsung and Microsoft team to stream Xbox games to smart displays and tellies

Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor Fri 10 Jun 2022 // 06:57 UTC

Microsoft and Samsung have teamed to stream Xbox games on the Korean giant's smart televisions and monitors.
Samsung has offered streaming games since early 2022, taking advantage of its smart displays running the Linux-based Tizen OS. The "gaming hub" installed on those devices can already deliver games from Google Stadia and Nvidia GeForce Now.
Xbox is a rather larger brand, making this deal considerably more significant.

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Semiconductor industry growth to slow in 2022, warns IDC

Chip price hikes keeping sector healthy but new fabs could lead to 'overcapacity'

Dylan Martin Thu 9 Jun 2022 // 15:34 UTC

The global economy may be in a tenuous situation right now, but the semiconductor industry is likely to walk away from 2022 with a "healthy" boost in revenues, according to analysts at IDC. But beware oversupply, the analyst firm warns.
Semiconductor companies across the world are expected to grow collective revenues by 13.7 percent year-on-year to $661 billion, IDC said in research published Wednesday. Global semiconductor revenue last year was $582 billion.
"Overall, the semiconductor industry remains on track to deliver another healthy year of growth as the super cycle that began in 2020 continues this year," said Mario Morales, IDC group vice president of semiconductors.

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Samsung and Intel bosses discuss silicon cooperation

Details? Nope. Potential? Enormous.

Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor Tue 31 May 2022 // 06:56 UTC

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger and Samsung Electronics boss Lee Jae-yong met on Monday in South Korea and “discussed how to cooperate between the two companies."
That quote comes from Samsung, which also let the world know the two leaders talked about next-generation memory chips, silicon for PCs and mobile devices, fabless chip design, the foundry business, and more.
It is unclear if the talks addressed a particular issue, or just represented the heads of the world’s top two chipmakers getting together for a chat while Gelsinger was in town.

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Who had money on Samsung and Red Hat joining forces on next-gen memory software?

Cloudy server testbed coming, open source code filtering into RHEL promised

Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor Wed 25 May 2022 // 02:14 UTC

Samsung and Red Hat have pledged to work together on developing software to get the best from emerging memory technologies.
The Korean giant points out that a bunch of storage and memory tech – NVMe SSDs, Compute Express Link, the combination of high-bandwidth memory and processing-in-memory, and data fabrics – all need enabling software if they are to work well with the kind of demanding applications they're promised to, well, enable.
The tech is likely to be used in different tiers, while sharing memory across devices is well and truly on the agenda as part of a renewed push for composable infrastructure.

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Toyota cuts vehicle production over global chip shortage

Just as Samsung pledges to invest $360b to shore up next-gen industries

Dan Robinson Tue 24 May 2022 // 16:00 UTC

Toyota is to slash global production of motor vehicles due to the semiconductor shortage. The news comes as Samsung pledges to invest about $360 billion over the next five years to bolster chip production, along with other strategic sectors.
In a statement, Toyota said it has had to lower the production schedule by tens of thousands of units globally from the numbers it provided to suppliers at the beginning of the year.
"The shortage of semiconductors, spread of COVID-19 and other factors are making it difficult to look ahead, but we will continue to make every effort possible to deliver as many vehicles to our customers at the earliest date," the company said.

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Samsung unveils 512GB DRAM CXL module in E3.S form factor

PCIe 5.0 device hints at servers with lots of memory, maybe shared

Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor Tue 10 May 2022 // 04:45 UTC

Samsung has unveiled a 512-gigabyte Compute Express Link (CXL) DRAM module, which awaits servers to make it sing.
The device will ship in the EDSFF E3.S form factor – a standard most often employed in high-capacity solid-state disks (SSDs).
E3.S is expected to replace both M2 and 2.5-inch SSDs eventually, but Samsung has acknowledged that it may be some time before servers ready to handle the device appear. That time may well be spent figuring out how to make DRAM work well in E3.S, as DRAM is faster than the flash used in SSDs. The good news is PCIe 5.0 can handle that extra I/O action.

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TSMC, Samsung plan price hikes for chip designers – reports

Nvidia, AMD, Apple et al may be forced to pass cost on to customers

Dylan Martin Fri 13 May 2022 // 18:42 UTC

Just as costs for some components have started to come down, TSMC and Samsung, the two largest contract chip manufacturers in the world, are reportedly planning to increase prices of production, which may affect Nvidia, AMD, Apple, and others that rely on the foundries.
Reports emerged earlier this week stating that Taiwan-based TSMC is planning price hikes in the single-digit percentages for legacy and advanced chip manufacturing technologies next year. Citing industry sources, Nikkei reported that the price hike will be around five to eight percent.
On Friday Bloomberg reported that South Korea's Samsung is planning to raise prices for chip designers by 15-20 percent this year, citing industry sources. Legacy nodes will be hit hardest, and the new pricing will come into effect in the second half of the year.

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Samsung unveils hardened SD card that can last 16 years if you treat it right

And apply an asterisk or two

Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor Wed 4 May 2022 // 08:15 UTC

Samsung has dished up a new variety of SD card that can, it claims, sustain 16 years of continual writes.
The Korean giant's calculations for the longevity of the PRO Endurance Memory Card – for that is the new tech's name – assume their use to record 1920×1080 video content at 26Mbit/sec (3.25MB/sec).
At that rate, the 256GB model is rated to endure 140,160 hours of use. Smaller capacity models won't last as long because they'll be overwritten more often, so the 128GB, 64GB and 32GB each halve their larger sibling's lifetime.

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