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As of today, Chinese gallium, germanium and antimony are no longer being exported to the US. Germanium and gallium exports had already ceased in October, and antimony exports have dropped by 97 percent since September. This official declaration comes a day after the US announced it would further tighten technological exports to China, particularly referring to computer chips. This ban includes materials that have potential military applications, as per Reuters. The Chinese export ban primarily concerns what the government calls dual-use items, which are objects both the military and civilians can use. Due to this ban, graphite exports to the US from China must also undergo stricter reviews. However, they arent outright banned from exporting yet. Gallium and germanium are used to make semiconductors, and the latter can also be found in fiber optic cables and solar cells. As for antimony, you may find it in shotgun shells, nuclear weapons, night vision goggles and some batteries. These export bans are significant because China has been outputting 48 percent of globally mined antimony, 59.2 percent of refined germanium and 98.8 percent of refined gallium production. The US must now scramble to locate new deposits containing these materials, as the ban has already affected prices. Antimony trioxide has been 228 percent more expensive since the beginning of this year. China has been finding ways to be technologically independent since the US banned exports to the Central Nation. The result of such efforts include HarmonyOS, Huaweis chips being used in AI development and the Beidou Navigation Satellite System.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/china-has-banned-certain-metal-exports-in-retaliation-to-the-us-chip-restrictions-144005531.html?src=rss
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The Twitch subscriber crown is back in Kai Cenat's hands, with the creator ending his month-long subathon at almost 727,700 subscribers, CNBC reports. He more than doubled the record of 326,650 subscribers VTuber Ironmouse set in September, who had, in turn, overtaken Cenat's number one spot a competition I am suddenly very invested in. Cenat not only streamed every day during "Mafiathon 2" in November, but did so 24 hours a day. He was joined by a cast of characters that feels like the lead up to a bad joke: What do Snoop Dogg, Bill Nye the science guy and Kevin Hart all have in common? They were guests on Cenat's livestream I warned you it would be bad. But, seriously, he managed to stream for 30 days thanks to these guests and takeovers from his team that allowed him to sleep or go to the bathroom without a camera joining. Twitch subscribers pay $5 for ad-free viewing and exclusives and, even with Twitch taking a serious cut, Cenat likely made upwards of $3 million. He stated that 20 percent of his proceeds will go towards a school he's building in Nigeria. Cenat currently holds 15.4 million followers on Twitch and 6.79 million followers on YouTube. We'll have to wait and see whether Ironmouse tries to reclaim the crown. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/kai-cenat-takes-back-his-twitch-subscriber-record-during-month-long-livestream-143006215.html?src=rss
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Intel's second-generation Xe2 Arc GPUs are real, and once again, they could be compelling options for gamers looking for capable video cards under $250. Confirming leaks from the past week, Intel today unveiled the $249 Arc B580 and the slightly less capable $219 B570, both of which target 1,440p gaming. They feature the company's new XeSS2 AI capabilities (which are also coming to the older Arc cards), including Super Resolution upscaling (like the original XeSS), frame generation and low latency modes. The goal, according to Intel, is to deliver more performance per dollar compared to NVIDIA's $299 RTX 4060 and AMD's Radeon 7600. It's a noble pitch, but one that's also a repeat of what Intel attempted with its previous Arc GPUs. We liked those cards well enough, and the company was diligent about rolling out driver updates, yet that hasn't stopped its overall GPU market share from falling to zero percent. I'd wager many gamers didn't want to take a chance on Intel's hardware and software when NVIDIA and AMD's offerings were battle tested and just a bit more expensive. Intel The power bump from the Xe2 cards might change the situation for Intel, though. The company claims the B580 is on average 24 percent faster than its previous A750 Limited Edition GPU in 1,440p with ultra graphics settings, and it also has a 10 percent lead on NVIDIA's RTX 4060. (Intel's benchmarks show the B580 performing 43 percent faster than the RTX 4060 in Cyberpunk 2077, but at the same time it's nearly 20 percent slower while playing RoboCop: Rogue City.) Intel Spec-wise, Intel's new GPUs should keep up with the demands of 1,440p-focused gamers. The B580 features 20 Xe cores, 20 ray tracing units, 12GB of VRAM and a 2,670 MHz clock speed. The B570 comes in with a bit less all around: 18 Xe cores, 10GB of RAM and a 2,500MHz clock speed. I'd wager most people would be better off spending the extra $30 for a bit more future proofing, but 1080p gamers might not see the need for much extra power. In a briefing with media, Intel Fellow Tom Petersen explained that the company learned a lot from its previous GPUs (which also marked the first time Intel seriously worked on discrete graphics since 2010). "With XE2, we have a new hardware platform, and that allows us to deliver higher utilization, improved work distribution, and less software overhead," he said. "So at the end of the day, it's all about getting software efficiency up so that we can deliver the benefits of the hardware we're building." Intel At the very least, Intel's new XeSS AI features are competitive with NVIDIA's DLSS3. The B580 GPU can double the performance of Diablo IV when using XeSS, according to Intel, and the new frame generation feature should be able to push your fps count even higher. Just like NVIDIA's tech, it's not just upscaling graphics from a lower resolution, it's also interpolating entirely new frames. The company's XeSS2 low latency, or XeLL, also improves responsiveness by 45 percent. Intel claims the B580 trounces the RTX 4060 in AI LLM performance, achieving around 20 more tokens per second in Llama 2 and Llama 3.1 workloads. While it would be interesting to see if Intel can ever scale its Arc GPUs beyond the mid-range (the previous Arc 770 was a solid RTX 3070 Ti competitor), I'm honestly more intrigued by how the company is innovating in the low-end. Thanks to the rising complexity of high-end GPUs, the idea of cheap and capable video cards has practically disappeared over the last decade. Intel could win over a loyal fanbase of budget gamers if it actually sticks with its GPU efforts. Intel If you're intrigued by these new GPUs, you won't have to wait long to get your hands on them. Arc B580 cards will be available on December 13 for $249, while Arc B570 models will arrive next month on January 16 for $219. Intel will be making its own Limited Edition version of the Arc B580 (above), but it's leaving the B570 cards up to its partners, including Acer, ASRock and Sparkle.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pc/intel-unveils-its-budget-battlemage-arc-gpus-with-xess2-ai-features-140027123.html?src=rss
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