HARDWARE
Nintendo Switch Hardware Sales Reach 68.3 Million It's the company's second best-selling home console ever! According to Nintendo, the Switch has reached over 68 million hardware sales globally, ranking #2 after Wii, which managed to sell over 100 million units and almost 1 billion in software sales. On a side note, the Switch Lite, a console that's dedicated to handheld play, has already shifted over 10 million units so far.
Roland releases two TR Drumatix drum machines The company has added three new instruments to the TR drum machine family. The TR-6S Rhythm Performer uses a six-track sequencer, combining performance and affordability. TR-06 Drumatix is a detailed replica of the Roland TR-606 Drumatix, while also incorporating an on-board compressor. Finally, the TR-606 Software Rhythm Composer is a plug-in for DAW music production.
Intel takes shots at AMD laptop battery performance The Santa Clara company has released a report which suggests that laptops using its 11th generation mobile CPUs need less power in comparison with AMD's Ryzen 4000-series processors. According to Intel, tests run using Office 365 applications and PCMark 10 demonstrate that AMD's CPUs don't fare that well while running on battery power, with performance decreasing by 38-48%.
Sega launches a micro version of the Game Gear Who needs a micro game console, when we've got so many powerful smartphones these days? Lots of people, if you ask Sega. The company has just released a micro version of its handheld which has made history about three decades ago. The console has a size of 3.15 x 1.7 x 0.78 inches; it will be available in black, blue, yellow and red, each version including four different games.
The best and worst uses of PlayStation 4 hardware Gamespot has recently published an article which highlights the best and worst PS4 features. Some of these features worked okay, some didn't, and many of them were abandoned. Sharing and streaming were successful, for example, while adding swipe controls to the DualShock touchpad wasn't such a great idea. Companion apps made a few games fun to play, but PlayStation VR was a hit.
Google Meet hardware promises powerful AI features Google has unveiled its "Series One" meeting room hardware today. It's a videoconferencing system that can output high-quality audio and video, being built for groups of 6 to 20 people. Users can join conferences automatically; Google's AI will recognize their voices and authorize them. The platform also incorporates advanced noise cancellation and voice amplification features.
Windows 10 will get the AOMedia Video 1 codec this year Microsoft will bring the hardware-accelerated AOMedia Video 1 (AV1) codec to Windows 10 this year. The codec uses efficient data compression algorithms, being able to encode and decode files with greater compression rates in comparison with the existing H.265 codec. AV1 can be delivered across a great variety of computing platforms and can be used without paying any royalties.
Nvidia supplies hardware for 10-exaflop supercomputer Leonardo, one of the most powerful supercomputers in Italy, will use Nvidia's Ampere-based graphics cards and Mellanox HDR 200GB/s Infiniband networking. The computer is supposed to deliver up to 10 exaflops of half-precision floating-point performance and will be used for research and innovation. Possible usage cases include drug discovery, space exploration, weather modeling, etc.