QUALCOMM

Company says it’s not expecting any revenue from Huawei after 2024

Following the recent US chip export ban, Qualcomm stated in its financial filing that it is not expecting any product revenue from Huawei after 2024.

The US Department of Commerce revoked Qualcomm’s license to supply “4G and certain other integrated circuit products” including “WiFi products” to Huawei and its affiliates and subsidies.

The move comes after American firms like Qualcomm were barred from selling its 5G chips to Huawei because of the US trade ban imposed in 2019. Now, with this new ban, Qualcomm is essentially unable to provide its main products, smartphone chipsets, to the Chinese giant.

Intel is also affected by the latest ban on chip exports to Huawei. Although Intel clarified that the revocation applies to “certain licenses for export of consumer-related items” to its customers in China. 

Since the ban targets consumer-related items, it’s likely that Intel will not supply chips for laptops to Huawei. However, it should still be able to export chips for non-consumer applications, such as those used in data center servers.

In response to the ban, the Chinese foreign ministry strongly objected, stating that China firmly opposes the United States stretching the concept of national security and misusing export controls to unjustly suppress Chinese companies.

Huawei has been under the radar of the US since 2019 when it was first placed on a trade ban list. It prevented American firms from selling their technology, including 5G chips, to the Chinese tech giant.

Further in 2020, the US mandated that foreign companies that are using American chipmaking equipment need to get a license before selling semiconductors to Huawei. These licenses have now been revoked for Qualcomm and Intel.

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ASUS

GeForce RTX 5090 Could Sport A Massive 600W GPU Cooler To Chill Blackwell

The ASUS Strix GeForce RTX 4090 has one of the most gloriously massive coolers ever attached to a powerful GPU. It is long, wide, tall, and expansive in every other direction you can imagine for the simple sake of overkill-tier cooling. According to some recent murmurs from BenchLife, NVIDIA's upcoming GeForce RTX 5090 may be facing a similar trajectory with its air cooler. 

NVIDIA is no doubt testing various cooler designs for its upcoming Blackwell GPU lineup, chief of which will include taming the supposedly ultra-powerful RTX 5090. The RTX 4090 carried with it a TDP of 450 watts, but some bespoke models could theoretically get up to the 600 watt mark. The RTX 5090 appears to be no different, as the increased power allotment allows for it to push performance even further. 

While the RTX 5090 is supposedly launching second after the RTX 5080, it remains the halo product that draws the admiration of gamers the world over, and gives NVIDIA the most bragging rights.

For practical purposes, many of the GeForce RTX 4080 cards (Including the Super variant) shared the same cooler sizes as several RTX 4090 GPUs. The lower 320 watt TDP of the RTX 4080 made this even more overkill, but assisted in economies of scale for manufacturers. 

In recent years, NVIDIA has made strides with its Founders Edition GPU cooler designs. Evolving from the blower style coolers of the GTX 10 series, it slowly progressed forward with the dual fan design of the RTX 2080 Ti, for example. The RTX 30 series brought entirely new concepts to bare, which were further tweaked with the eventual RTX 40 series lineup. 

The current RTX 4090 cooler for NVIDIA's Founders Edition model has proved popular and quite capable of handling the thermal loads of this GPU. Whether the Blackwell-based RTX 5090 will have a 600 watt TDP is up for debate, as the 12VHPWHR connector is at its limits there. It can still have that capability, to have massive overhead if the TDP ends up being much less. 

There has been one drawback with the large RTX 4090 cooler designs, to the chagrin of some. The very wide and over-the-top size of many coolers has given trouble to many PC builders who cannot fit them properly in standard cases. This has raised the call for differently angled cables, even angled adapters. Unfortunately, many issues have arisen, with some such adapters undergoing a complete recall. If the air cooler sizes were smaller, there likely would be less reason to bend cables or use third-party adapters. 

Efficiency while providing class-leading power has been a hallmark of the RTX 40 series, not to mention the power savings when combined with NVIDIA's DLSS 3. The RTX 5090 will no doubt be powerful, and likely demand significant power to keep it satisfied. The cooler attached to it will have not only performance considerations, but also aesthetic impact for consumers. 

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TECH

Bigtec's look Asia to expand its AI infrastructure

The boom in artificial intelligence (AI) has seen global private equity investors and asset managers increasingly interested in making acquisitions and investments linked to data centers in Asia. The information is from Reuters.

The momentum in infrastructures to generate AI technology has called for companies to invest in more data capabilities, which has increased the pace of business in Asia.

Asia, including Japan, was the region that led dealmaking activity in the global data center market this year, with M&A value totaling US$840.47 million, more than half of the global value, data from the LSEG, British stock exchange.

The total value moved last year in Asia in business related to data centers was US$3.45 billion, also according to LSEG, and the expectation is that this number will be exceeded in 2024.

Among the large data center deals already underway, global investment firm Blackstone intends to acquire AirTrunk, which has 11 hyper-scale data centers in Australia and the rest of the Asian region.

AirTrunk's owners estimate that the deal would cost up to 15 billion Australian dollars, or US$9.8 billion. It would be the biggest data center transaction in Asia this year.

Microsoft targets Asia to expand its AI infrastructure...Last week, Microsoft claimed it would invest US$2.2 billion over the next four years in Malaysia, aiming to expand its cloud and AI services across Asia;

The increase in investments in data centers in Asia follows a similar trajectory to that observed in the USA and Europe;

In these regions, technology giants such as Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet and Meta have been rapidly expanding their AI capabilities;

Microsoft's first data center on Asian soil will be in Thailand and, in addition, the company has already announced US$1.7 billion in investments in AI and cloud facilities in Indonesia.

 

TECH

iPhone 16 Pro: Design Upgrade Shines In New Leak

The next iPhones won’t arrive until this fall, but a new report has revealed that a new, much brighter display could be in the offing for the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max, 20% brighter than the current iPhone 15 Pro.

According to Weibo leaker Instant Digital, the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max will have a display with a peak brightness of 1,200 nits in typical use, compared to the 1,000nits found on the iPhone 15 Pro.

The iPhone 15 Pro also offers a peak brightness of 1,600 nits for HDR content, and it’s thought that the next models will match this HDR brightness.

Instant Digital has a decent track record that included a recent report that the iPad Pro would have a nanotexture glass option, and that the front-facing camera would be on the landscape edge. Both these rumors were confirmed on Tuesday, May 7 when the new iPad Pro was announced.

Something else was confirmed in that launch: that the iPad Pro would use something called Tandem OLED, a system which uses two OLED screens together (in tandem, you might say) to create a suitably bright display that one OLED on its own couldn’t manage.

Apple described the iPad Pro screen as “the world’s most advanced display.” So, it looks like Apple may have a similarly important display upgrade in waiting for this year’s Pro iPhones.

The iPhone’s typical brightness level has been 1,000 nits for almost three years now: the 1,000 nits level was introduced in 2021. Which means that if this report is correct, the everyday brightness of the iPhone 16 Pro is set to be noticeably higher than at present. These brightness levels are important, especially for users who tend to look at their phones outdoors. We can all identify with seeing screens too dim to make out in sunlight, especially through sunglasses.

There have already been several reports of updates to the iPhone 16 range, such as a new strategy for its new-generation processors, more advanced camera lenses, a new thermal design to prevent overheating, improved battery life, a new microphone to improve Siri, an extra button, designed for shooting video and an improved main camera sensor. So, the suggestion that the display is about to become much brighter is another exciting promise. Let’s see if it’s fulfilled.

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