By Nick Godt Yamaha announced it will pull out of the e-bike business in the U.S. by the end of the year.

Source:: Digital Trends

By The Conversation While many people in the creative industries are worrying that AI is about to steal their jobs, Oscar-winning film director James Cameron is embracing the technology. Cameron is famous for making the Avatar and Terminator movies, as well as Titanic. Now he has joined the board of Stability.AI, a leading player in the world of Generative AI. In Cameron’s Terminator films, Skynet is an artificial general intelligence that has become self-aware and is determined to destroy the humans who are trying to deactivate it. Forty years after the first of those movies, its director appears to be changing sides and…This story continues at The Next Web

Source:: The Next Web

By Nick Godt Amid slowing supply from Tesla, Ford is turning to Lectron, an EV-accessories supplier, to provide (NACS) adapters to its customers.

Source:: Digital Trends

By Nick Godt Aptera just completed a successful test drive of PI-2, the first production-intent version of its futuristic-looking two-seater, three-wheel solar EV.

Source:: Digital Trends

Microsoft’s second quarter results beat analysts’ expectations. as revenue increased by 16% to $ 65.6 billion — higher than the $64.5 billion analysts had expected. Net income rose 11% to $ 24.67 billion.

Following major investments in AI, revenue from the Azure cloud business is now up 33%.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in a comment that the company’s AI business will soon be worth $ 10 billion a year, making it the fastest product category to reach that milestone, Axios reports.

Revenue from server products and cloud services increased by 23%, with revenue from the Microsoft 365 commercial products and cloud services up by 13% for the quarter.

Source:: Computer World

As the pandemic eased in 2022 and 2023, US core business centers in large and small cities continued to suffer the after effects or remote- and hybrid-work policies, which led to a 20% to 40% reduction in office space use and a devaluation of properties. The big switch to remote work left many downtowns largely empty for months.

Since then, commercial areas have seen a slow but steady return to the office, with average office occupancy rate hitting more than 60%.

Still, many offices remain partially or completely empty.

“We are approaching 20 quarters of contraction in the office market,” according to Peter Miscovich, global future of work leader at Jones Lang LaSalle IP (JLL), a commercial real estate and investment management services firm. “There are signs of stabilization of vacancies in certain parts of the country.”

One trend affecting the repopulation of corporate cubicles involves a rash of return-to-office (RTO) mandates. Last month, for example, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told employees to get back into the office five days a week beginning in early 2025. Ericsson recently tightened its policy for office attendance, too.

Earlier this year, Dell Technologies ordered many workers to return to their corporate desks, and more recently told its global sales team to work in office five days a week. And just last week, 3M ordered senior employees back to corporate headquarters.

According to one recent survey, most companies are pushing for RTO mandates in 2025. The survey by ResumeBuilder found that nine in 10 companies will enact RTO mandates based on data from 764 companies that transitioned to a fully remote work model during the pandemic. But the data is nuanced. Not all RTO policies, of course, require employees to be in the office five days a week.

Kastle

“There’s only 25% of companies, overall, seeking RTO five days per week, and the remaining 75% are involved in various forms of hybrid or hybrid/remote and my forecast is that hybrid will endure,” Miscovich said.

The ResumeBuilder survey results were similar to Miscovich’s findings. The majority of companies are operating with a hybrid model, while 30% require employees to be in the office full-time.

Office occupancy rates fell from 100% in February 2020, at the start of the pandemic’s stay-at-home orders, to just 14% by April of that same year. Over the next four years, those rates have slowly climbed as companies embraced hybrid work policies. But on average, occupancy never fully returned to 100%, according to Kastle Systems, a provider of security key fob technology for 2,600 buildings in 138 US cities.

Recent data shows occupancy rates are again climbing. In January, the peak occupancy rate of US office buildings stood around 46% based on a 10-city average, according to Kastle. Today, more than 61% of buildings are occupied in those same 10 large cities. And cities such as Austin and Houston are seeing occupancy rates as high as 77% to 71%, respectively. Chicago’s office building occupancy rate stands at 69%.

Peak occupancy rates are only half the story. “Peak” relates to days when offices are most full, such as on Mondays and Tuesdays. On less popular days, such as Fridays, office occupancy rates dipped as low as 33% this month.

Kastle

Despite the rise in occupancy rates, office values remain depressed compared to before the pandemic, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). It found there has been a 39% decline in office building values since 2020 — and a large percentage of pre-pandemic leases will come up for renewal in the next few years. That could force some companies to more closely evaluate their office needs.

The COVID pandemic served as something of an unintentional experiment that revealed a host of uncomfortable workplace truths — namely, that most employees always preferred remote work and at-home knowledge workers were just as, if not more, productive. Another realization: working in the office, by default, isn’t as rewarding some people as it is for others, according to Phil Kirschner, an associate partner in McKinsey & Co.’s real estate and people and organizational performance practices.

Not everyone, for example, feels the same level of inclusion and equality in an office setting. “Diverse populations of almost any measure — whether skin color, sexual orientation, physical disability — are affected by in-office requirements, and there’s a higher desire for workplace flexibility either when taking a job or the likelihood to leave a job if you’re not offered it,” Kirschner said in an earlier interview with Computerworld.

Higher quality buildings, such as those that are newer and have more amenities, have fared better of late. That’s prompted a rush to build or renovate older offices that not only have newer amenities and mixed-use spaces (such as combined office, shopping and recreational facilities) but updated technology to better support remote and hybrid workers.

But older properties with fewer amenities could suffer. In particular, Class B, Class C and even lower-end Class A grade buildings could see the biggest valuation declines in the current market; those who are leasing or buying space now want top-notch AAA buildings — those with the latest amenities, technologies, and locations.

“There’s a potential space shortage in certain districts and locations,” Miscovich said. “Even three-days a week in the office is affecting demand. We are seeing demand for that high-quality space, but there’s also the surplus of the obsolete, class B- or C buildings that are not serving the workforce of the future.”

Leading the return-to-office trend are legal firms, financial services organizations, defense contractors, and industrial companies seeking to expand their footprint as the result of business demands.

“And, then the technology sector is picking up in places where they have AI talent demands and key urban centers for tech talent,” Miscovich said. “Technology is fascinating because you have some firms becoming more office centric and others are still offering more of a hybrid approach. We’ll see how that sector plays out over the next couple of years.”

Miscovich describes the pandemic was “an accelerant” and “time machine” that moved the US workforce 10 years into the future in just two years. Remote work was inevitable with the evolution of the digital economy, and the pandemic showed the promise of hybrid and distributed work.

Now workplace design, leadership, culture, workplace practices, change management, hybrid workplace technologies — all need to mature as we go forward beyond the post pandemic world, he said.

“The future of work will be distributed; it will be diverse and it will be dynamic. I think the RTO mandates occurring are for individual companies in that 25% range,” Miscovich said. “That may increase to 30%, but our point of view is hybrid work will endure for the longer term. We have some clients that by 2027 or 2030 may have a portion of their workforce in office five days a week and another portion of their workforce at three days a week or three days a month.

“I don’t think there will be ever a future steady state, just given the dynamism of artificial intelligence, talent and distributed work,” he said. “I think we’ll see a continuous evolution and continuous learning mind set relative to future of work strategies.”

Source:: Computer World

By The Conversation OpenAI, the company that made ChatGPT, has launched a new artificial intelligence (AI) system called Strawberry. It is designed not just to provide quick responses to questions, like ChatGPT, but to think or “reason”. This raises several major concerns. If Strawberry really is capable of some form of reasoning, could this AI system cheat and deceive humans? OpenAI can program the AI in ways that mitigate its ability to manipulate humans. But the company’s own evaluations rate it as a “medium risk” for its ability to assist experts in the “operational planning of reproducing a known biological threat” – in…This story continues at The Next Web

Source:: The Next Web

Apple’s big week of Mac news continued with the arrival today of the new M4-based MacBook Pro family, including a powerful new M4 Max processor and a bump to standard memory in the MacBook Air.

“MacBook Pro is an incredibly powerful tool that millions of people use to do their life’s best work, and today we’re making it even better,” said John Ternus, Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Engineering, announcing the new machines.

Apple’s latest notebooks follow the introduction of the mighty Mac mini and iMac — also powered by M4 processors – and promise to deliver the kind of power and performance for even the toughest professional workflows. Of course, the energy benefits are also apparent in the 24-hour battery life Apple promises. 

Apple Intelligence is visible throughout all the new Macs. But perhaps another facet of Apple’s intelligence is that by introducing a new Mac each day this week, it has grabbed a huge chunk of the news cycle. Apple also quietly beefed up the MacBook Air (the world’s most popular laptop), bestowing M2 and M3 models with 16GB of unified memory as standard, at no additional cost — pretty much confirming that, in the age of AI, 16GB is the new 8GB.

The new MacBook Pro

There’s a lot to like in the new laptops, which can be ordered with an M4, M4 Pro, or an all-new M4 Max chip.  Compared to an Intel-based MacBook Pro, the new model provides nearly 10 times faster performance for AI-based workloads and 20 times faster performance for graphics-intensive tasks, Apple said.

In other words, the chips unleash huge leaps forward in computational power similar to what a supercomputer cluster would have given you not so long ago – with estimated battery life that’s the longest we’ve ever had in a Mac. You can also support two high-resolution external displays as well as the built-in display.

All models, both 14-in. and 16-in. configurations, feature a Liquid Retina XDR screen with a nano-texture display option and up to 1,000 nits of brightness (1,600 nits of peak brightness). Equipped with a six-speaker sound system, they offer a 12-megapixel Center Stage camera, Thunderbolt 5 on M4 Pro and M4 Max models, an 8K HDMI port, MagSafe 3, headphone jack, SDXC card slot, Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3. Available in space black and silver, all can be pre-ordered today; shipments begin Nov. 8. 

But what’s different is all about the processor.

Apple

Speed demons

“Apple silicon has taken the Mac to unprecedented heights, and the rapid pace of innovation continues with M4 Pro and M4 Max,” Johny Srouji, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware technologies, said in a statement. “With the world’s fastest CPU core, immensely more powerful GPUs, and the fastest Neural Engine ever, the power-efficient performance and capabilities of the M4 family extend its lead as the most advanced lineup of chips in the industry.”

Built using second-generation 3-nanometer technology, the M4 family of chips boasts the world’s fastest CPU core, along with outstanding multithreaded CPU performance. The chips also support increased memory bandwidth, which is water in the desert for large language models (LLMs) you might want to run.

That 24-hour battery life hasn’t made for any compromise in terms of performance. Apple claims the new M4 MacBook Pro will run 1.8 times faster than the M1 MacBook Pro, with some tasks running even faster than that. The Neural Engine is also three times more powerful, which — in combination with the increased 120Gbps memory bandwidth and 16GB installed unified memory — means the computer will be incredibly capable of running and creating new AI.

Apple cherry-picked some illustrations of how this performance equates to getting work done faster, promising image processing in Affinity Photo will be seven times faster than it was with the Intel Core i7 MacBook Pro (13-in.) or 1.8 times faster than in the M1 MacBook Pro. Blender users can expect 3D rendering to be more than 10 times faster than on Intel.

But even those comparisons are thoroughly trashed by the performance you can expect from the M4 Pro Macs. Apple claims that a MacBook Pro with M4 Pro will enjoy a massive 75% increase in memory bandwidth over the prior generation — double that of any AI PC chip. These things really do promise massive enhancements in complex professional workflows in fields like structural engineering or data modeling. Those performance boosts are essential to some industries. 

Apple

King of the Hill – the M4 Max

It’s hard to miss just how much performance Apple promises with the M4 Max MacBook Pro: 3.5 times the performance of the M1 Max MacBook Pro. (That’s pretty impressive on its own, given that particular Mac still blows people’s socks off.)

What this means is that the heaviest creative, scientific, or data modelling tasks will be absolutely devoured by this machine. Want to run DNA sequences in Oxford Nanopore? Now you can — an astonishing 23.8 times faster than you could before.

The LLMs we use tomorrow will be built in these Macs, because they can handle the workload it takes to manage nearly 200 billion parameters. It doesn’t stop there, the M4 Max holds a Media Engine with two ProRes accelerators, so media handling (at least on apps that support ProRes) will fly.

Consider this: Apple claims a MacBook Pro with an M4 Max can compile code in Xcode 4.6 times faster than the 16‑in. MacBook Pro with Intel Core i9.

If you recall, I looked at that particular Mac in 2019 and called it the most capable Apple notebook I’d ever used. To deliver a near five-fold performance increase in under five years since then really shows the extent to which the move to Apple Silicon has unleashed evolution on the Mac. This is also more than twice as fast as the 16‑in. MacBook Pro with M1 Max (“a major step forward,” reviewers said).

Apple

The details about the chips

M4

Up to 10-core CPU. (four performance, six efficiency cores). 1.8x faster than M1.

10-core GPU. Two times faster than M1.

16-core Neural Engine

16GB of unified memory at 120GBps, with support for up to 32GB.

M4 Pro 

Up to 14-core CPU. (10 performance, four efficiency cores). 1.9 times faster than M1 Pro.

20-core GPU. Apple says this is twice as fast as the M4 (which means it’s probably four times faster than the M1).

16-core Neural Engine.

16GB of unified memory at 120GBps, with support for up to 64GB at an astonishing 275GBps (the latter can be configured for up to 546GBps).

M4 Max

Up to 16-core CPU. (12 performance, four efficiency cores). 2.2 times faster than M1 Max.

40-core GPU, 1.9 times faster than the M1 Max.

16-core Neural Engine

Up to 128GB unified memory. Over half a terabyte per second (546GBps) of unified memory bandwidth.

Media Engine that includes two video encode engines and two ProRes accelerators.

There are a variety of build-to-order options that can further increase performance.

Apple

How much do they cost?

The 14-in. MacBook Pro with M4 starts at $1,599, and with M4 Pro, $1,999; the 16‑in. MacBook Pro starts at $2,499. I ran a quick build-to-order calculation to find that a 16-in. MacBook Pro with a 16-core M4 Max chip, nano-texture display, 64GB memory, and 1TB SSD will cost you $4,349. Completely maxxed out (bar software) you’re looking at $7,349.

Weirdly, in light of the performance you can expect, I imagine that for some users in some industries even the very highest end system will seem to be a bargain, though most of us don’t need that much power.

Better for the Environment

Apple really is pressing hard on its goal to becoming carbon neutral by 2030. These new Macs are created from a custom alloy that uses 100% recycled aluminum in the enclosure. You’ll also find 100% recycled rare earth elements in all magnets, and 100% recycled tin soldering, gold plating, and copper in multiple printed circuit boards. The packaging has no plastic included.

One more thing

Stop everything for a moment, zoom out, and take another look at Apple’s news this week. You might then recognize that from the $599 Mac mini all the way to the cream of the MacBook Pro crop, Apple now offers systems more than capable of handling any task; even the Mac mini can handle heavy workloads, just a little slower.

Not only this, but with Apple Intelligence, Apple has the foundations for a Mac/iPhone/iPad AI ecosystem no one else can touch. That’s all fine and impressive on its own — but these new pro Mac notebooks add another arrow to Apple’s bow. 

Look at it another way: MacBook Pro is already incredibly popular among data scientists and AI researchers. What that means, of course, is that even if Apple doesn’t prevail in the AI race (I wouldn’t bet against it), there’s still a very, very big chance that whatever AI does gain dominance will be something that was, itself, made on a Mac.

And that’s an accomplishment no one else can match. Time to upgrade?

Please follow me on LinkedIn, Mastodon, or join me in the AppleHolic’s bar & grill group on MeWe.

Source:: Computer World

OpenAI intends to design its own AI chips, which would give it an edge over its competitors, according to Reuters. The chips will be developed in collaboration with TSMC and Broadcom, meaning OpenAI will not invest in its own factories.

If all goes according to plan, the first chips could be ready for use as early as 2026.

While waiting for its own chips to arrive, OpenAI has decided to order processors from AMD to be used to train its AI models. (Nvidia chips are currently used for that purpose, but high demand has meant prices for these chips have risen sharply.)

Source:: Computer World

By Andrii Degeler  Welcome to the new episode of the TNW Podcast — the show where we discuss the latest developments in the European technology ecosystem and feature interviews with some of the most interesting people in the industry. In today’s special episode, we’re happy to present an interview with Diana van Stijn, co-founder and chief medical officer at Lapsi Health, a Dutch startup that builds smart medical hardware — starting with a digital stethoscope. Also featured in the interview is the sound of Andrii’s heart as captured by Lapsi’s first device, Keikku. Here are the links for this episode: Dutch startup…This story continues at The Next Web

Source:: The Next Web

By Amanda Kavanagh Whether you’re looking to change the direction of your career or expand your skillset as a programmer, the languages you chose to learn will significantly impact your time commitment and prospects. Some languages use familiar syntax, welcome minimum code commands for heavy-duty work, and are open-source with a helpful developer community that guides users in making the most of it. Others are complicated due to complex syntax, how the code is structured and organised, and not-so-seamless onboarding experiences. 5 hot roles hiring right now Test Engineer High Tech – Netherlands based only, Capgemini, Eindhoven Software Developer (C++), Artisans, Zwolle Senior…This story continues at The Next Web

Source:: The Next Web

Amazon might have accidentally broken the story early, but as anticipated the introduction of Apple’s all-new, M4-processor-powered Mac mini is making big waves. The tiny but incredibly powerful desktop exemplifies all the advantages of Apple Silicon — smaller, faster, and cheaper than we could have seen before, a new building block in the Apple Intelligence ecosystem.

All the rumors were true (again)

It turns out that all the expectation for the tiny Mac were correct:

The Mac mini offers either an M4 or M4 Pro chip.

The M4 CPU offers 4 performance, 6 efficiency cores and a 10-core GPU.

The M4 Pro offers 10 performance and 4 efficiency cores, boosted by a 20-core GPU. And it has 75% more memory bandwidth than the M3 Pro, twice as much bandwidth as available to any AI chip. 

All have at least 16GB of unified memory.

As anticipated, it’s much faster than the M1 Mac mini which blew everybody’s minds when it was introduced, and the Neural engine in the M4 Pro model is more than three times faster than the M1 Mac mini.

For connectivity, you’ll find two USB-C ports, a headphone jack on the front, and three Thunderbolt 4 ports (or Thunderbolt 5 ports on the Mac Pro models), Ethernet, and HDMI at the rear.

The M4 Mac mini can support up to two 6K displays and up to one 5K display, while the M4 Pro can support up to three 6K displays at 60Hz. You get hardware-based ray-tracing, too.

For size, it’s just 5-in. square (about 127mm each side).

Pricing: Mac mini with M4 starts at $599. The Mac mini with an M4 Pro starts at $1,399.

Apple

The power, the glory, and now the M4 Pro

Apple Silicon has been transforming Apple’s ecosystem ever since the company acquired PA Semi. First, it enabled the company to deliver uniquely powerful smartphones that delivered computational performance at low energy. Apple has now taken those ideas and put them inside Macs equipped with M-series chips. Not only do these Macs make the Intel chips the company previously used the equivalent of Elmer Fudd trying (and failing) to keep up with the Road Runner, but they also deliver performance while sipping electricity.

As a result, Apple can continue to focus on delivering real computers in multiple form factors — want a tablet? Here’s an M4 iPad Pro. Looking for a super powerful laptop? MacBook Pro is there for you. Searching for a small “bring your own mouse and keyboard” system that won’t break the bank for use in your home or office? This is what Mac mini was born for.

Apple Silicon continues to unleash the imagination of Apple’s product design teams, and I suspect we’ve barely seen what’s coming. And all this performance power is now available to Apple Intelligence, which Apple will introduce globally into spring 2025.

Apple

How can a Mac mini help you get things done?

Hyperbole aside, how will Mac mini help you get your work done? Apple shares the following proof points to attest to the performance boost you can expect from M4 chips in mini:

When compared to the best-selling PC desktop in its price range, the mini is up to six times faster and 1/20 its size.

With M4, Mac mini delivers up to 1.8 times faster CPU performance and 2.2 times faster GPU performance over the M1 model.

When compared to the Mac mini with an Intel Core i7, the new M4 mini delivers up to 33 times faster image upscaling performance in Photomator.

When compared to an M1 Mac mini, the new model is up to twice as fast transcribing on-device AI speech-to-text in MacWhisper.

These real world performance advantages are even more impressive on the M4 Pro device.

When compared to the Mac mini with Intel Core i7, the Mac mini with M4 Pro performs spreadsheet calculations up to four times faster in Microsoft Excel. It’s also 26 times faster at DNA sequencing in Oxford Nanopore MinKNOW.

The Neural Engine in the M4 Pro is also more than three times faster than in the M1 Mac mini.

M4 Pro supports up to 64GB of unified memory and 273GBps of memory bandwidth — twice as much as any AI PC chip — for accelerating AI workloads.

Apple

Climate control

So, apart from being smaller, faster, and more energy efficient, how else can the new Mac mini help your company reduce its carbon impact? Just by existing, I suppose — the new Mac mini is Apple’s first carbon neutral Mac. It is made with more than 50% recycled content overall, including 100% recycled aluminum in the enclosure, 100% recycled gold plating in all Apple-designed printed circuit boards, and 100% recycled rare earth elements in all magnets. Apple has also told us the device uses 85% less aluminium than it did before. (Even the electricity used in its manufacture is sourced from 100% renewable electricity.) 

This is important stuff and marks a really solid stepping stone on the company’s progress toward being completely carbon neutral by the end of the decade. But Apple is going even a little further than that. 

The company understands that within carbon neutrality, it must also consider the consequences of its products during normal use. To address this, Apple has invested in clean energy projects around the world to help mitigate the electricity consumption customers will cause when using these Macs. It is also investing in carbon credits, which it characterizes as being “high-quality.”

Apple has slammed some carbon credit schemes for not delivering what they promise, but in this case has focused those efforts on nature-based projects. Finally, the packaging for the Mac is also entirely fiber-based. Apple aims to remove all plastic from its packaging by next year.

The new AI PC

What this means for users is that Apple’s new AI PC is also the most environmentally-friendly PC. For enterprise buyers, it means that when you purchase a larger number of these machines you’re also ticking a few more boxes in your corporate sustainability policy, while also entering a new space for digital transformation of your business. Plus, of course, you’re reducing your TCO, tech support draw, and reducing your exposure to ransomware and hacks.

With Apple Intelligence already available in some nations and scheduled to arrive in Europe in April next year, Apple’s approach to AI is mandatory. It has set out to design a safe, private, and secure system that works across its entire ecosystem, and the immense contribution of Private Cloud Compute means any business can begin to explore the productivity-boosting capability of AI on machines more powerful than anything else you can purchase at that price.

And given that Private Cloud Compute is something you can weave into your internal enterprise applications, it makes sense for heavily regulated industries to explore it, too. The company is defining what everyone should expect from cloud-based AI.

It’s also important to think about how Apple Intelligence works across Apple’s ecosystem — smartphone, tablet, and Mac. It means the company now offers business the fastest and most flexible secure AI experience. It’s hard not to avoid thinking that when it comes to the incoming world of AI PCs, Apple now (as anticipated) offers the world’s very best ecosystem for AI — all in a tiny box that has created very big waves in a very big pond.

By its actions, Apple is making it clear that it sees the AI opportunity very well and intends to seize the moment. 

Please follow me on LinkedIn, Mastodon, or join me in the AppleHolic’s bar & grill group on MeWe.

Source:: Computer World

Microsoft has combined chat and channels in Teams as part of a redesign that will include a new threaded conversation experience. 

Channel conversations — currently accessed in the team section — will be moved to chat. The goal is to make it easier for users to view all their messages in one place rather than continuously switching between sections. 

“This integrates both chat and channels into your critical workflows, making it easier to access, triage, and organize your conversations,”  Jeff Teper, president of Collaborative Apps and Platforms at Microsoft, said in a blog post Monday. 

New filters available in Teams can be applied to let users focus on chats, channels, or unread messages.

Among the other changes is a new @mention view to highlight new messages across multiple chats or channels. There’s also a “custom section” where users can keep conversations relating to a project or topic — whether that’s in chat, channels, or with a Teams bot — in a single place. 

Teams users will see a “self-service, guided onboarding flow” when the updates are made available in public preview next month, Teper said. This will help introduce users to the new look and allow them to configure it to the way they want to work: those who prefer to keep chat and channels separate can do so, for example, either during the onboarding or at a later stage. 

Microsoft will test threaded conversations with customers during this quarter, with an expected roll out in mid-2025. 

Source:: Computer World

By Adarsh Verma If you want to open a PDF document these days, the first solution that comes to…
The post 10 Best Free PDF Reader Software For Windows [2024 Edition] appeared first on Fossbytes.

Source:: Fossbytes

The Phoenix fabrication facility of the world’s largest semiconductor chip maker is yielding more usable chips than similar plants in Taiwan, according to the Taipei Times.

Rick Cassidy, president of TSMC’s US division, said during a webinar last week that the share of usable chips from the company’s Phoenix plant exceeds that of similar Taiwanese plants by 4%. If true, the superior performance at the Phoenix fab is notable because the US government has been working to spur a return of the semiconductor manufacturing industry to US shores, where manufacturing tends to be more costly.

Better yields would help offset those higher costs.

“Four percent higher yield is certainly good news,” said Harry Moser, president of the Reshoring Initiative, a non-profit that offers companies assessments on offshoring costs. “To be competitive, we need a higher yield. It is agreed that US factory capital cost and operating cost will be 10% to 20% higher than in most other countries. The 4% will offset some of that difference.”

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted critical gaps in the semiconductor supply chain as imports to the US and other nations ground to a halt, affecting the production of everything with electronics, from smart phones to cars. The CHIPS and Science Act, passed in 2022, earmarked more than $52 billion in funding and tax incentives for use by the US semiconductor industry to create new or expand existing manufacturing and R&D facilities.

The CHIPS Act was created to address both future possible supply chain catastrophes and to re-establish the US as a major chips manufacturer.

To date, the CHIPS Act has allocated more than $32 billion in proposed funding across 18 companies, 16 states, and 26 projects. However, no CHIPS funding has yet been disbursed to any companies, according to the US Department of Commerce.

TSMC is the main supplier of chips for both Nvidia and Apple. The CHIPS Act allocated $6.6 billion in grants and $5 billion in loans, along with a 25% tax credit, to incentivize the company to build three fabs in Arizona. TSMC’s first facility was scheduled to open this year, but the company pushed that back to next year after labor shortages surfaced.

The US reshoring efforts come at a time when the industry doesn’t have anywhere near the workforce — including technicians, computer scientists, and engineers — required to support future needs. By some estimates, the US semiconductor industry will face a worker shortfall of between 59,000 and 146,000 workers by 2029. A minimum of 50,000 trained semiconductor engineers will be needed over the next several years in the US to meet the overwhelming and rapidly growing demand, according to a study by Purdue University.

The broader US economy is set to have a gap of 1.4 million such workers, according to a 2023 study from the Semiconductor Industry Association. So the competition will be fierce over those skilled workers. Compounding the problem is an ongoing exodus of existing talent as older workers retire. A study from Deloitte found that nearly 90% of tech leaders interviewed cited recruiting as their biggest challenge.

A TSMC spokesperson shared statements regarding the Phoenix fab with Computerworld from a third quarter earnings call by CEO C.C. Wei, but declined to comment on Cassidy’s claim directly.

“Our first fab entered engineering wafer production in April with 4-nanometer process technology, and the result is a highly satisfactory, with a very good yield,” Wei said. “This is an important operational milestone for TSMC and our customers, demonstrating TSMC’s strong manufacturing capability and execution.”

Wei said he expects volume production of the company’s first Arizona fab to start in early 2025, and he is “confident” it will deliver “the same level of manufacturing quality and reliability” from our fabs in Taiwan.

TSMC is also building two other fabs in the Phoenix area that will use more advanced technologies based on its customer needs, Wei said. The second fab is scheduled to begin volume production in 2028 and the third fab will begin production by the end of the decade.

“Thus, TSMC will continue to play a critical and integral role in enabling our customers’ success, while remaining a key partner and enabler of the US semiconductor industry,” Wei said.

Reshore Now’s Moser said it would be good to know whether the Phoenix fab uses identical equipment as in Taiwan, speculating that the US plant could have been more modern. “Was it accomplished solely by US workers or significantly by Taiwanese brought over to aid the start-up?” he said.

Source:: Computer World

Apple’s week of Mac began today with a newly announced iMac, now beefed up with an M4 chip and more internal memory. Apple says the iMac is up to 4.5 times faster than an equivalent all-in-one Intel Core 7 Windows PC — and promises the machine will deliver up to six times the performance of the most popular Intel-based iMac.

The inference is obvious: if you use your iMac professionally, you might want to think about an upgrade. Reinforcing the point, Apple says the iMac is up to 1.7 times faster for most tasks and 2.1 times faster for more advanced tasks when compared to the M1 model.

Apple sets the scene for its AI

Part of the reason for this improved performance is the big boost to 16GB of unified onboard memory (configurable to 24GB). That memory boost is to support Apple Intelligence, which is also available for Macs running macOS Sequoia 15.1 or above. The Neural Engine in M4 chips is 3x faster than the M1. (Apple Intelligence is also now available for iPhones and iPads running iOS/iPad OS 18.1.)

Be warned, the entry-level $1,299 iMac might not reach these performance heights as it ships with an 8-core CPU; the rest of the range offers 10 cores. You do get hardware-accelerated ray tracing, which is going to make a big difference when you use the Mac.

Apple’s AI platform play means all its current devices will now support Apple Intelligence, meaning the company now offers the world’s biggest AI ecosystem.

What else is new?

The iMac display continues to be the same 24-in. 4.5K Retina display we all know and love, with a new nano-texture glass option available if color fidelity and anti-reflection matters to you.

Starting at $1,299, the new iMacs are available in a “parade” of colors, including green, yellow, orange, pink, purple, blue, and silver. Buyers get: a 12-megapixel Center Stage camera with support for Desk View; a brilliant microphone and speaker system; and four USB-C ports, all of which support Thunderbolt 4. You can even run two external displays. Wrapping it up, you’ll find Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.1 along with TouchID support, thanks to a button on the keyboard.

Overall, this is a solid and update, but it has to be said that it doesn’t seem to be the main attraction — that honor this week is likely to be all about a smaller machine….

We’re still waiting for the Mac mini

I can’t help but feel the iMac is being seen through a lens of pre-announcement speculation for the Mac mini. That product is already attracting lots of interest — just look at the pre-release headlines:

“This is the Mac Mini’s big moment” (The Verge).

“A tiny Mac mini could be the ultimate travel companion and I can’t wait for it” (TechRadar).

“Apple Mac mini with M4 chip could be a game-changer for creatives, here’s why” (Hindustan Times).

Talk about setting the scene.

Even Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has put his well-connected assessment out there; he obliquely tells us that even if you are quite happy with your M1 Mac mini, the move to M4 processors “could feel as significant as that first shift from Intel machines to Apple chips.” 

That’s borne out by Apple’s iMac claims above. What we can piece together from the iMac introduction is that the new Mac mini will also deliver huge performance boosts in contrast to the M1 or M2 models already in use.

That’s an upgrade productivity benefits are built on in some industries, and it suggests that if your business has M1 (or older) Mac minis in its fleet, the new M4 models seem to be a tempting upgrade. After all, you don’t even need to replace the display….

Will a M4 Mac mini be the new Mac for business?

This introduction is expected to be about more than the silicon inside these Macs — it’s also the new design around them. If reports are correct, the new mini may be significantly smaller as Apple’s designers draw yet another benefit out of the energy and heat dissipation advantages of the company’s Arm-based chips.

Expect it to be a small aluminium box that’s taller but otherwise similar in size to the current Apple TV. I visualize this as being a box about half the size of a regular paperback book and perhaps as thick as three average length novels stacked atop each other. That’s really small. And it should now come with 16GB of base memory and support for Apple Intelligence.

Speaking just last year, MacStadium CTO Chris Chapman told me his existing server farms full of Mac minis used so much less power that his data center providers were, “always calling us up to tell us we’re not using enough power for the space.”

If the smaller size means lower energy consumption (and given what we know of Apple’s silicon evolution so far, it probably does), then for enterprises handling hundreds of these machines — or any other Mac, come to that — the M4 upgrade promises significant reductions in energy costs. 

A good start to a week of Mac

Combined with the faster chip, these tiny desktop Mac minis or larger iMacs are going to run just about anything you want as effectively as a hot knife through butter.

That’s why the upcoming Mac mini has generated so much interest, even before its introduction. Combined with the impressive iMac rollout today and anticipation around the expected powerful MacBook Pro improvements, Apple’s big week of Mac news is off to a strong start. But will it distract or focus interest on the company’s end of year results announcement Thursday?

Please follow me on LinkedIn, Mastodon, or join me in the AppleHolic’s bar & grill group on MeWe.

Source:: Computer World

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