MIT researchers have developed a technology to visualize supercomputer hardware using the Unity 3D Game engine, aiming to simplify the monitoring, diagnosing, and fixing of problems in these complex systems. The technology, known as MM3D, is part of the Data Center Infrastructure Management tools by the MIT SuperCloud division and allows for real-time system reporting and alerting. While not yet commercialized, this innovation could significantly improve system administration for supercomputers.

Graphics card prices in Germany and Austria have increased by 6-7% in September, with AMD's Radeon RX 6000 series retailing for 174% of MSRP and Nvidia's GeForce RTX 30 series at 170% of MSRP. The Radeon RX 6600 XT is trending towards a price exaggeration of at least +45%. The report by 3DCenter highlights a worrying trend of price increases and declining availability, which is directly affecting pricing. While the data reflects local trends, it is indicative of broader market conditions.

A report by Linux gaming site Boiling Steam reveals that 72% of the top 50 games on Steam can run on Linux, either natively or using Proton. Valve is addressing compatibility issues, particularly with anti-cheat engines, ahead of the Steam Deck's launch. The Steam Deck, which will run a Linux-based OS, is expected to ship by the end of 2021. Valve's Proton project is crucial for translating Windows-specific calls into Linux-compatible ones, and while it's a challenging task, Valve aims to ensure the Steam Deck can run most of the Steam library effectively.

Philips has released the 279M1RV monitor, a 27-inch Nano IPS panel with 4K resolution, 144 Hz refresh rate, VESA HDR 600 support, and Ambiglow ambient lighting. It features Nvidia's G-SYNC support, multiple I/O ports including HDMI 2.1 and USB-C, and built-in speakers with DTS Sound. Priced at £725/€845 in Europe, it is not yet available in the United States.

Intel's Z690 chipset, designed for the upcoming 12th Generation Core processors codenamed Alder Lake, has been detailed in a leak. The chipset reportedly supports both DDR4 and DDR5 DRAM and features 16 Gen5 PCIe lanes from the CPU, up to 12 PCIe Gen4 lanes, and up to 16 PCIe Gen3 lanes from the chipset. It also includes an upgraded Direct Media Interface with 8 PCIe Gen4 lanes and robust USB connectivity with up to four USB 3.2 2×2 ports. Additionally, it supports CNVio modules for Intel Wi-Fi 6E. The information is unconfirmed and should be taken with caution until Intel officially releases details.

The open-source RISC-V Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) has seen a new development with the porting of Nvidia's CUDA software library to the Vortex RISC-V GPGPU platform. CUDA, which provides GPU acceleration when coded for support, can now be executed on the Vortex platform that is based on the RV32IMF ISA and supports OpenCL 1.2 graphics API. Researchers have created a pipeline to translate CUDA source codes into an executable RISC-V binary file, involving several intermediate representations and the use of POCL, an open-source implementation of the OpenCL standard.

Cryptocurrency values reaching record highs have led to an increase in GPU prices in China, as reported by MyDrivers. This trend is not isolated to China, with similar price hikes observed in Germany. The profitability of cryptocurrency mining is driving up the costs of graphics cards, with Asus's RTX 3070 Ti and Radeon RX 6600 XT experiencing significant price increases.

AMD is developing the Frontier supercomputer for the US Oak Ridge National Laboratory, aiming to deliver over 1.5 ExaFLOPs of computational power. The $600 million project features next-generation EPYC processors and Radeon Instinct graphics cards, with a coherent interconnect between CPUs and GPUs. AMD's recent Linux kernel patches continue to support Frontier's advanced memory management capabilities. The Frontier is set to be the world's fastest and first exascale-class supercomputer, surpassing Intel's delayed Aurora system.

The PC market is experiencing significant growth during the pandemic, with IDC forecasting a 14% increase in worldwide PC shipments in 2021, reaching 347 million units. The growth is driven primarily by the laptop market, with notebook PCs expected to be the main driver of future growth. IDC's long-term forecast suggests a compound annual growth rate of 3.2% for traditional PCs, while tablet demand is expected to decline. Despite potential future declines as budgets shift post-pandemic, the market is anticipated to be larger than pre-pandemic projections.

IBM introduced the Telum processor at Hot Chips 33, designed for the next generation of IBM Z mainframe computers. The Telum chip, fabricated on Samsung's 7 nm node, features 22.5 billion transistors, runs at over 5 GHz, and includes 8 CPU cores with 256MB of semi-private cache. It offers significant improvements over the previous generation, including a custom out-of-order execution pipeline, SMT2, and an AI accelerator with over 6 TeraFLOPs of computing throughput, supporting various machine learning libraries. The new IBM Z processor will use a 16-core dual-chip module scalable to a 256-core system.

Fritzchens Fritz has published die shots of the AMD Ryzen 5 5600G APU, revealing a 179.9 mm2 silicon area, which is 16% larger than its predecessor due to the new Zen 3 cores. The APU features six cores, twelve threads, and seven GPU cores based on Vega architecture. Analysis by Locuza suggests that while AMD could have added more GPU cores, power constraints limited the number of Radeon Vega cores included. The APU's 10.7 billion 7 nm transistors are primarily used for computational purposes.

Microsoft released the Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 22000.132 to Dev and Beta Channel participants, featuring updates and improvements. The build includes fixes for Search and Widgets issues, and Windows Sandbox crash. New app updates include a revamped Snipping Tool with dark mode, a re-written Calculator app in C# with new features, and modernized visuals for Mail and Calendar apps with theme support.

Intel is removing support for its Cannon Lake graphics driver in the upcoming Linux kernel version 5.15, as the chips were shipped without the integrated graphics engine active. The removal indicates that the driver was superfluous, as the graphics engine never functioned due to yield issues with Intel's 10nm process. The Cannon Lake chips were initially limited to the China region, and the subsequent delays in Intel's 10nm process allowed competitor AMD to gain a significant advantage. The majority of Intel's development efforts for the Linux kernel version 5.15 appear to be focused on the graphics driver stack.

Gigabyte is set to adopt Intel's next-generation Alder Lake processors in its upcoming AORUS 17G 17YE5 laptop, which was revealed through a UserBenchmark test submission. The laptop features a 14-core Alder Lake processor with 20 threads and DDR5 memory. However, the benchmark score was abnormally low, suggesting it may be an early engineering sample with untuned performance or incompatibility with the benchmark software. The system includes a 16GB DDR5 SODIMM running at DDR5-4800, indicating potential for higher performance in the final product.

Linus Torvalds announced the release of Linux kernel version 5.14, which notably removes legacy support for Parallel ATA (PATA), or IDE, shifting all IDE support to libATA. This change reflects the obsolescence of IDE in favor of more advanced protocols like SATA in modern PCs. The removal of the old IDE layer is part of ongoing kernel development and cleanup, despite the overall growth in the kernel's codebase.