Destiny 2 Developer Looks to Alternative Game Formats and Pivots Game's Update Strat

Over the years, Destiny 2's popularity has waxed and waned, once peaking at over 300,000 players per month and subsequently settling at around 35,000 players, with annual updates often resulting in an influx of returning and new players. Now, according to a blog post from Bungie, the developer claims that Destiny 2 will adopt a new content delivery strategy and look to a combination of non-linear narratives and new game formats, like "rogue-likes or survival shooters" for future content updates.

In the blog post celebrating the Destiny franchise's 10th anniversary, Bungie details how the company will be moving away from large, yearly explanations containing one-shot stories. Instead, with the new content delivery strategy, which Bungie calls Codename: Frontiers, the free-to-play RPG will get two expansions per year and four major free content updates every year. Read full story


https://www.techpowerup.com/326492/desti...e-strategy

(PR) Rambus Announces Industry-First HBM4 Controller IP to Accelerate Next-Generatio

Rambus Inc., a premier chip and silicon IP provider making data faster and safer, today announced the industry's first HBM4 Memory Controller IP, extending its market leadership in HBM IP with broad ecosystem support. This new solution supports the advanced feature set of HBM4 devices, and will enable designers to address the demanding memory bandwidth requirements of next-generation AI accelerators and graphics processing units (GPUs).

"With Large Language Models (LLMs) now exceeding a trillion parameters and continuing to grow, overcoming bottlenecks in memory bandwidth and capacity is mission-critical to meeting the real-time performance requirements of AI training and inference," said Neeraj Paliwal, SVP and general manager of Silicon IP, at Rambus. "As the leading silicon IP provider for AI 2.0, we are bringing the industry's first HBM4 Controller IP solution to the market to help our customers unlock breakthrough performance in their state-of-the-art processors and accelerators." Read full story


https://www.techpowerup.com/326461/rambu...-workloads

Hey guys,
If you need an invite on Deadlock, Valves new game, add me on steam. Friend code is 19737474

This Week in Gaming (Week 37)

Welcome to another week of September and more new game releases. This week, we have a massive AAA release, well, at least for those that are into hammers of war and marines in space. For those that are not, we still have a busy week of new releases that starts with a very different take on what a car is, a new version of an Atari classic, an RPG farming sim, a normal take on what a car is and finally some eldritch horrors, because it's Friday the 13th.

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 / This week's AAA release / Monday 9 September
Embody the superhuman skill and brutality of a Space Marine. Unleash deadly abilities and devastating weaponry to obliterate the relentless Tyranid swarms. Defend the Imperium in spectacular third-person action in solo or multiplayer modes. Steam Link Read full story


https://www.techpowerup.com/326395/this-...ng-week-37

(PR) Coalition Formed to Accelerate the Use of Glass Substrates for Advanced Chips a

E&R Engineering Corp. hosted an event on August 28, 2024, in Taipei, Taiwan, where they launched the "E-Core System." This initiative, a combination of "E&R" and "Glass Core" inspired by the sound of "Ecosystem," led to the establishment of the "Glass Substrate Supplier E-Core System Alliance." The alliance aims to combine expertise to promote comprehensive solutions, providing equipment and materials for next-generation advanced packaging with glass substrates to both domestic and international customers.

E&R's E-Core Alliance includes Manz AG, Scientech for wet etching, HYAWEI OPTRONICS for AOI optical inspection, Lincotec, STK Corp., Skytech, Group Up for sputtering and ABF lamination equipment, and other key component suppliers such as HIWIN, HIWIN MIKROSYSTEM, Keyence Taiwan, Mirle Group, ACE PILLAR CHYI DING), and Coherent. Read full story


https://www.techpowerup.com/326369/coali...d-chiplets

AMD OpenSIL Implementation (AGESA Replacement) On Track for 2025

OpenSIL is an open-source CPU initialization framework project that seeks to replace on-chip initialization microcode, such as AGESA, across both client- and server processors. AMD looks to implement OpenSIL as it makes its AMD EPYC processors more friendly to large customers that want to take control of this aspect of the processor. Since its open-sourcing in June 2023, AMD has come up with reference motherboards implementing OpenSIL, as well as modifying a Supermicro server motherboard to the architecture, to demo at conferences. AMD firmware engineer Paul Grimes presented the company's progress with implementing OpenSIL, at the OSFC conference, in Germany. It's been known that AMD is targeting a 2025-26 timeline for OpenSIL to hit product, but AMD put out specifics, such as its next-generation "Venice" server processor supporting OpenSIL.

"Venice" is codename for an AMD EPYC server processor generation succeeding "Turin." It is built on the future "Zen 6" microarchitecture, and AMD could at least unveil the processor some time in 2025, if not mass-produce it. late-2024 thru 2025 could see the company ramp up "Turin" and other server processors implementing "Zen 5." That's not all, AMD plans to being OpenSIL even to client processors, with the generation of Ryzen processors based on "Zen 6." This will see the AGESA microcode replaced by a first-party firmware from AMD based on OpenSIL, which PC OEMs will be able to customize. The biggest impact of this change will be felt in the commercial notebook and commercial desktop segments, where large organizations can take greater control over the chip initialization firmware. Read full story


https://www.techpowerup.com/326336/amd-o...k-for-2025

Creators of Risk of Rain 2 and many other Hopoo devs snapped up by Valve

The Risk of Rain series has been successful over the years. The first game in the sequel was developed by university students Paul Morse and Duncan Drummond, becoming an indie smash hit. The second game, Risk of Rain 2, was released in 2019 and also sold pretty well, gaining 500,000 players just in early access.

Later, in 2022, Gearbox gained ownership of the Risk of Rain IP, from Morse and Drummond's development studio, Hopoo games, and simply put, the reception to its latest expansion has not been going great since then. Read full story


https://www.techpowerup.com/326253/creat...p-by-valve

Post your Cinebench R23 results here...

I will start, This is with an i7 14700KF . Undervolted a bit at 5.5ghz

   

Pretty decent multicore score from what I've seen... 35121 .

(PR) AMD Appoints AI Industry Veteran Keith Strier to Expand Global AI Capabilities

AMD today announced that Keith Strier has joined the company as senior vice president of global AI markets. Strier has more than 30 years of experience in strategic business and market development, technical engineering and enabling responsible AI deployments. He most recently served as vice president of worldwide AI initiatives at NVIDIA, with responsibility for expanding commercial engagements with foreign governments. At AMD, he will be responsible for expanding the company's AI vision, driving new ecosystem capabilities and accelerating strategic AI engagements globally across public and private sectors. He reports to AMD Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Mark Papermaster.

"Keith is an excellent addition to our leadership team, bringing deep market expertise and extensive network of relationships that will significantly strengthen our AI engagements globally," said AMD Chair and CEO, Dr. Lisa Su. "His extensive experience and proven track record acting as a trusted advisor to countries and companies uniquely positions him to help accelerate adoption of AMD-powered solutions to meet the growing demand for AI." Read full story


https://www.techpowerup.com/326234/amd-a...ngagements

Icy Dock Makes the M.2 SSD Easily Swappable with ExpressSlot MB204MP-B AIC Dock

We've seen plenty of PCIe x16 add-on cards that put out four M.2 NVMe slots, but noting quite like this. The Icy Dock ExpressSlot MB204MP-B lets you swap in and out four M.2 NVMe drives. They can even be hot-swappable, provided your host platform and software support it. The technological part of the card is simple—there is no bridge chip, it relies on the host's PCIe lane bifurcation to turn a x16 slot to four M.2 slots with x4 wiring, each. The four drives have their own link/activity LED. A 50 mm lateral blower fan ventilates the four drives. Much of the innovation is in the way the drives can be installed and swapped or even hot-swapped. Intel VROC or AMD RAID technologies on platforms such as Xeon W "Sapphire Rapids" and Ryzen Threadripper 7000-series, should also lend RAID features.

Each of the four M.2 slots comes in contact with a caddy. This aluminium caddy lets you place an M.2 Gen 5 (or older) SSD, with sizes of up to M.2-2280. You're supposed to place a bare drive, as a thermal pad transfers heat from the drive to the caddy's body, which doubles up as a heatsink, under the airflow of the dock's lateral airflow fan. The dock includes four caddies, but you can buy more separately from the company. Icy Dock innovated a mechanism with which the caddy simply slots into the dock, and is elected at the flip of a spring-loaded lever. The dock requires a 6-pin PCIe power connection, so it has 150 W of power budget for the four Gen 5 SSDs. The company didn't reveal pricing.


https://www.techpowerup.com/326189/icy-d...b-aic-dock