Month: January 2021

Enlarge / Intel Chief Executive Officer Bob Swan during an Intel press event for CES 2020 at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center on January 6, 2020 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (credit: Getty Images)

Intel is replacing its chief executive Bob Swan after a series of manufacturing setbacks and competitive blunders that lost the veteran Silicon Valley company its crown as the top US chipmaker.

Swan, its former finance chief who held the top job for just over two years, will be succeeded on February 15 by former Intel veteran Pat Gelsinger, who is currently chief executive of VMware, the infrastructure software group.

The company made the move just days before Mr. Swan was expected to unveil Intel’s new manufacturing strategy, together with the company’s latest earnings.

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Samsung and AMD announced in June 2019 that the two would team up to bring mobile GPUs to Samsung Exynos chips, with Samsung System LSI (the Exynos division of Samsung Electronics) licensing the Radeon GPU IP from AMD in a multi-year agreement. Yesterday, in a presentation for the Exynos 2100, Samsung gave an update on the partnership. Samsung LSI President and GM Dr. Inyup Kang announced, "We are working together with AMD, and we'll have a next-generation mobile GPU in the next flagship product."

So an AMD GPU is coming pretty soon, in the next "flagship product." Cool. There have been some differing interpretations on the Internet of what "flagship product" means in this context. Does that mean the next flagship Samsung smartphone or the next flagship Exynos chip? Since Kang works at Samsung LSI, the Exynos division, we're going to go with the interpretation that "product" means the next Exynos chipset, due out a full year from now. The other interpretation, that a new GPU would arrive sometime this year on a Galaxy Note, Fold, or whatever you want to interpret "flagship smartphone" as, would be very out of the ordinary since it would mean killing the new Exynos 2100 less than a year after launch.

Currently, Samsung doesn't throw the full weight of the company behind its own SoC division, instead splitting the world distribution between Exynos and the Exynos divisions' biggest SoC rival, Qualcomm. International users have yet to see what the new Exynos 2100 is like, but previously, the Exynos versions of Samsung phones have been so maligned that Samsung users started a petition begging for Qualcomm SoCs to be sold in their territory instead. For 2020's Galaxy S20, Samsung also pulled the Exynos SoC from its home market of South Korea, opting to ship a US-made Qualcomm chip instead, a move that reportedly "humiliated" the Exynos division.

Enlarge / Artist's conception of Ubisoft shoving EA out of the way in announcing its upcoming Star Wars game project.

Ubisoft will be publishing an open-world Star Wars game developed by The Division studio Massive Entertainment, the companies announced in a Wired story this morning.

Details are sparse, as even the specific characters and setting have yet to be revealed. But Wired's reporting suggests the game will be an open-world title, aiming for a longer play-time than a more linear story-driven game like 2019's Jedi: Fallen Order. The Division 2 and The Crew Director Julian Gerighty will serve as creative director on the game, which will use Massive's Snowdrop engine.

The Ubisoft-published game will mark the apparent and abrupt end of Disney's exclusivity deal with Electronic Arts, signed in 2013. That deal was reportedly planned to last ten years, which would have taken it through most of 2023.

Enlarge (credit: YouTube / Getty / Aurich Lawson)

YouTube, following in the path of very nearly every other social media platform, is suspending President Donald Trump's channel due to concerns that he will use it to foment additional violence in the coming days.

"After review, and in light of concerns about the ongoing potential for violence, we removed new content uploaded to Donald J. Trump's channel for violating our policies," the company said late Tuesday. "It now has its first strike and is temporarily prevented from uploading new content for a *minimum* of 7 days."

While it is possible Trump may have his account reinstated after that period, comments to his videos are shut down "indefinitely," due to "safety concerns found in the comments section," YouTube added.