Report: NVIDIA Forms Custom Chip Unit for Cloud Computing and More – AnandTech

With its highly successful A100 and H100 processors for artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC) applications, NVIDIA dominates AI datacenter deployments these days. But among large cloud service providers as well as emerging devices like software defined vehicles (SDVs) there is a global trend towards custom silicon. And, according to a report from Reuters, NVIDIA is putting together a new business unit to take on the custom chip market.

The new business unit will reportedly be led by vice president Dina McKinney, who has a wealth of experience from working at AMD, Marvell, and Qualcomm. The new division aims to address a wide range of sectors including automotive, gaming consoles, data centers, telecom, and others that could benefit from tailored silicon solutions. Although NVIDIA has not officially acknowledged the creation of this division, McKinneys LinkedIn profile as VP of Silicon Engineering reveals her involvement in developing silicon for 'cloud, 5G, gaming, and automotive,' hinting at the broad scope of her alleged business division.

Nine unofficial sources across the industry confirmed to Reuters the existence of the division, but NVIDIA has remained tight-lipped, only discussing its 2022 announcement regarding implementation of its networking technologies into third-party solutions. According to Reuters, NVIDIA has initiated discussions with leading tech companies, including Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Google, and OpenAI, to investigate the potential for developing custom chips. This hints that NVIDIA intends to extend its offerings beyond the conventional off-the-shelf datacenter and gaming products, embracing the growing trend towards customized silicon solutions.

While using NVIDIA's A100 and H100 processors for AI and high-performance computing (HPC) instances, major cloud service providers (CSPs) like Amazon Web Services, Google, and Microsoft are also advancing their custom processors to meet specific AI and general computing needs. This strategy enables them to cut costs as well as tailor capabilities and power consumption of their hardware to their particular needs. As a result, while NVIDIA's AI and HPC GPUs remain indispensable for many applications, an increasing portion of workloads now run on custom-designed silicon, which means lost business opportunities for NVIDIA. This shift towards bespoke silicon solutions is widespread and the market is expanding quickly. Essentially, instead of fighting custom silicon trend, NVIDIA wants to join it.

Meanwhile, analysts are painting the possibility of an even bigger picture. Well-known GPU industry observer Jon Peddie Research notes that they believe that NVIDIA may be interested in addressing not only CSPs with datacenter offerings, but also consumer market due to huge volumes.

"NVIDIA made their loyal fan base in the consumer market which enabled them to establish the brand and develop ever more powerful processors that could then be used as compute accelerators," said JPR's president Jon Peddie. "But the company has made its fortune in the deep-pocked datacenter market where mission-critical projects see the cost of silicon as trivial to the overall objective. The consumer side gives NVIDIA the economy of scale so they can apply enormous resources to developing chips and the software infrastructure around those chips. It is not just CUDA, but a vast library of software tools and libraries."

Back in mid-2010s NVIDIA tried to address smartphones and tablets with its Tegra SoCs, but without much success. However, the company managed to secure a spot in supplying the application processor for the highly-successful Nintendo Switch console, and certainly would like expand this business. The consumer business allows NVIDIA to design a chip and then sell it to one client for many years without changing its design, amortizing the high costs of development over many millions of chips.

"NVIDIA is of course interested in expanding its footprint in consoles right now they are supplying the biggest selling console supplier, and are calling on Microsoft and Sony every week to try and get back in," Peddie said. "NVIDIA was in the first Xbox, and in PlayStation 3. But AMD has a cost-performance advantage with their APUs, which NVIDIA hopes to match with Grace. And since Windows runs on Arm, NVIDIA has a shot at Microsoft. Sony's custom OS would not be much of a challenge for NVIDIA."

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Report: NVIDIA Forms Custom Chip Unit for Cloud Computing and More - AnandTech

A week into 2024 and Big Tech has earned enough to pay off all 2023 fines – TechRadar

2023 surely was an eventful year in tech. To cite just a few key moments, generative AI became mainstream thanks to software like ChatGPT; we had to say goodbye to the iconic blue bird while welcoming Twitter's new name (I know very well the pain of writing 'X, formerly known as Twitter' over the past six months); and big tech companies got fined the most under GDPR's data abuses for a total of more than $3 billion.

Well, on the latter point, data protection regulators' efforts turned out to be not as effective as it was hoped they'd be.

Swiss privacy firm behind popular email and VPN service, Proton reported that only after a week into 2024 the likes of Meta, Google, Apple and Microsoft earned enough to pay off all last year's fines. Let's take a look at what needs to change and, most importantly, what you can do in the meantime to truly protect your privacy.

"Whats clear is that these fines, though they appear to be a huge amount of money, in reality are just a drop in the ocean when it comes to the revenues that the tech giants are making. In other words, they arent a deterrent at all," Jurgita Miseviciute, Head of Public Policy & Government Affairs at Proton, told me.

Researchers at Proton have calculated that Alphabet (Google's parent company) needs only a bit more than a day to pay off its $941 million fines. Amazon and Apple's earnings of just a few hours are then enough to repay their data protection's sanctions of $111.7 and $186.4 million respectively.

While biggest data abuse perpetrator Meta, which got a record $1.3bn fine for its (mis)handling of EU user data in May last year, managed to accumulate all the necessary money in just about five working days.

These findings make it clear that data regulators' fines, as founder and CEO of Proton Andy Yen put it, are "little more than pocket change for these companies" instead of a mean to stop them abusing users' data. Not only that, he said, as "these minuscule fines essentially give the green light to tech giants to run riot in a marketplace skewed in their favor."

It's also quite common that big tech firms might appeal to these sanctions or simply refuse to pay, delaying the repayment for years. Take how Google contested India's fine, for instance, about the Android-related inquiry for abusing its dominant position in the market which started in 2019.

On this point, Yen said: "Its the average consumer that's losing outfacing higher prices, less choice, and no privacy. It has to stop and we need real, tangible change that puts people first, not profits."

According to Miseviciute, there are two main things that must happen for things to really change.

Did you know?

Fully enforced in May 2023, the EU Digital Market Act (DMA) brought new obligations for tech companies to ensure fair competition and protect people's digital rights. A similar bill, so-called Digital Markets, Consumer and Competition Bill (DMCC) is currently passing through the UK Parliament, too.

For starters, she believes that governments have to issue fines with a real financial effect in order to fight back against big monopolies.

"Thats why fines up to even 20% of global revenues for breaches of laws such as the EUs DMA [Digital Market Act] and up to 10% in case of the proposed DMCC [Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers] Bill in the UK are a step in the right direction," she told me.

If heavier sanctions are important, they are not everything. Miseviciute explained that regulators need to combine these with practical measures such as enforced behavioral and structural changes, for example.

Again, she sees the EU quite well-placed to do so due to the new powers gained with the DMA. However, elsewhere there are also some small steps in this direction.

"We hope Googles antitrust trial in the US serves as a catalyst for comprehensive antitrust regulation on the other side of the Atlantic. We also see promising potential regulatory developments in South Korea, Japan, Australia and other major jurisdictions," she told me.

"If you open up the marketplace, and you give innovators like Proton a chance to succeed, youll get solutions that are more private and more secure for consumers."

As we have seen, 2023 was yet another hard year for our online privacy.

The US, for instance, still lacks a federal data protection law with the proposed ADPPA being stalled at the time of writing. Enforced in August last year, India's new privacy law was strongly criticized for favoring government and big tech instead of citizens. Well, where allegedly strong legislations are in place like in the EU, these seem to have not enough teeth just yet.

Commenting on this point, Miseviciute told me: "Until laws like the DMA in the EU and the proposed DMCC in the UK are effectively put into practice we are living in a world where big tech rules the internetand all our privacy is at the mercy of their surveillance capitalism business model."

Did you know?

Two thirds of people in the UK would rather lose their passport than access to their email account. Yet, despite these concerns, most of them lack the necessary knowledge and tools to protect their digital privacy. Big Tech knows that, researchers revealed.

The glimpse of light in this gloomy scenario is that it's ultimately our choice if we want to keep using data-hungry products. Luckily, there are some smaller companies offering privacy-first alternatives you can switch to.

On its part, Proton appear to have been working hard to cut Google out of our digital life. Likewise the popular service, the Swiss-based provider offers an encrypted email service Proton Mail (which even beat the big tech giant by landing with a standalone desktop app in December), secure calendar and its own cloud storage Proton Drive, too.

Proton's product offering also includes one of the best virtual private network apps on the market (Proton VPN) to help you boosting your anonymity while browsing among other things, as well as a password manager tool (Proton Pass) to secure all your login details. Even better as all the provider's services come both with free and paid plans.

However, Proton is just one of the many companies developing privacy-first alternatives to big tech software. Worth a mention there are also encrypted messaging app Signal if you wish to replace WhatsApp with a more secure application and Mullvad browser to make the switch from Safari and Chrome.

Compare today's best overall VPNs

We test and review VPN services in the context of legal recreational uses. For example: 1. Accessing a service from another country (subject to the terms and conditions of that service). 2. Protecting your online security and strengthening your online privacy when abroad. We do not support or condone the illegal or malicious use of VPN services. Consuming pirated content that is paid-for is neither endorsed nor approved by Future Publishing.

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A week into 2024 and Big Tech has earned enough to pay off all 2023 fines - TechRadar

Why This Brain-Hacking Technology Will Turn Us All Into Cyborgs – The Daily Beast

It felt like magic: As I moved my head and eyes across the computer screen, the cursor moved with me. My goal was to click on pictures of targets on the display. Once the cursor reached a target, I would blink causing it to click on the targetas if it were reading my mind.

Of course, thats essentially what was happening. The headband I was wearing picked on my brain, eye, and facial signals. This data was fed through an AI-software that translated it into commands for the cursor. This allowed me to control what was on the screen, even though I didnt have a mouse or a trackpad. I didnt need them. My mind was doing all of the work.

The brain, eye, and face are great generators of electricity, Naeem Kemeilipoor, the founder of brain-computer interface (BCI) startup AAVAA, told The Daily Beast at the 2024 Consumer Electronics Show. Our sensors pick up the signals, and using AI we can interpret them.

The headband is just one of AAVAAs products that promises to bring non-invasive BCIs to the consumer market. Their other devices include AR glasses, headphones, and earbuds that all essentially accomplish the same function: reading your brain and facial signals to allow you to control your devices.

While BCI technology has largely remained in the research labs of universities and medical institutions, startups like AAVAA are looking for ways to put them in the handsor, rather, on the headsof everyday people. These products go beyond what we typically expect of our smart devices, seamlessly integrating our brain with technology around us. They also offer a lot of hope and promise for people with disabilities or limited mobilityallowing them to interact with and control their computers, smartphones, and even wheelchairs.

However, BCIs also blur the lines between the tech around us and our very minds. Though they can be helpful for people with disabilities, their widespread use and adoption raises questions and concerns about privacy, security, and even a users very personhood. Allowing a device to read our brain signals throws open the doors to these ethical considerations so, as they steadily become more popular, they could become more dangerous as well.

AAVAAs BCI devices on a table at CES 2024. AAVAA is looking for ways to put them in the handsor, rather, on the headsof everyday people.

BCIs loomed large all throughout CES 2024and for good reason. Beyond being able to control your devices, wearables that could read brain signals also promised to provide greater insights into users health, wellness, and productivity habits.

There were also a number of devices targeted at improving sleep quality such as the Frenz Brainband. The headband measures users brainwaves, heart rate, and breathing (among other metrics) to provide AI-curated sounds and music to help them fall asleep.

Every day is different and so every day your brain will be different, a Frenz spokesperson told The Daily Beast. Today, your brain might feel like white noise or nature sounds. Tomorrow, you might want binaural beats. Based on your brains reactions to your audio content, we know whats best for you.

To produce the noises, the headband used bone conduction, which converts audio data into vibrations on the skull that travel to the inner ear producing sound. Though it was difficult to hear clearly on the crowded show floor of CES, the headband managed to produce soothing beats as I wore them in a demo.

When you fall asleep, the audio automatically fades out, the spokesperson said. The headband keeps tracking all night, and if you wake up, you can press a button on the side to start the sounds to put you back to sleep.

However, not all BCIs are quite as helpful as they might appear. For example, there was MW75 Neuro, a pair of headphones from Master and Dynamic that purports to read your brains electroencephalogram (EEG) signals to provide insights on your level of focus. If you become distracted or your focus wanes for whatever reason, it alerts you so you can maintain productivity.

Sure, this might seem helpful if youre a student looking to squeeze in some more quality study time or a writer trying to hit a deadline on a story, but its also a stark and grim example of late-stage capitalism and a culture obsessed with work and productivity. While this technology is relatively new, its not difficult to imagine a future where these headphones are more commonplace andpotentiallyrequired by workplaces.

When most people think about BCIs, they typically think of brain-chip startups like Synchron and Neuralink. However, these technologies require users to undergo invasive surgeries in order to implant the technology. Non-invasive BCIs from the likes of AAVAA, on the other hand, require just a headband or headphones.

Thats what makes them so promising, Kemeilipoor explained. No longer would it be limited to only those users who really need it like those with disability issues. Any user can pop on the headband and start scrolling on their computer or turning their lamps and appliances on and off.

The Daily Beasts intrepid reporter Tony Ho Tran wears AAVAAs headband, which promises to bring non-invasive BCIs to the consumer market.

Its out of the box, he explained. Weve done the training [for the BCI] and now it works. Thats the beauty of what we do. It works right out of the boxand it works for everyone.

However, the fact that it can work for everyone is a top concern for ethical experts. Technology like this creates a minefield of potential privacy issues. After all, these companies may potentially have completely unfettered access to data from our literal brains. This is information that can be bought, sold, and used against consumers in an unprecedented way.

One comprehensive review published in 2017 in the journal BMC Medical Ethics pointed out that privacy is a major concern for potential users for this reason. BCI devices could reveal a variety of information, ranging from truthfulness, to psychological traits and mental states, to attitudes toward other people, creating potential issues such as workplace discrimination based on neural signals, the authors wrote.

To their credit, Kemeilipoor was adamant that AAVAA would and does not have access to individual brain signal data. But the concerns are still there, especially since there are notable examples of tech companies misusing user data. For example, Facebook has been sued multiple times for millions of dollars for storing users biometric data without their knowledge or consent. (Theyre certainly not the only company doing this either.)

These issues arent going to go awayand theyll be further exacerbated by the infusion of technology and the human brain. This is a phenomenon that also brings up concerns about personhood as well. At what point, exactly, does the human end and the computer begin once you are able to essentially control devices as an extension of yourself like your arms or legs?

The questionis it a tool or is it myself?takes on an ethical valence when researchers ask whether BCI users will become cyborgs, the authors wrote. They later added that some ethical experts worry that being more robotic makes one less human.

Yet, the benefits are undeniableespecially for those for whom BCIs could give more autonomy and mobility. Youre no longer limited by what you can do with your hands. Now, you can control the things around you simply by looking in a certain direction or moving your face in a specific way. It doesnt matter if youre in a wheelchair or completely paralyzed. Your mind is the limit.

This type of technology is like the internet of humans, Kemeilipoor said. This is the FitBit of the future. Not only are you able to monitor all your biometrics, it also allows you to control your devicesand its coming to market very soon.

Its promising. Its scary. And its also inevitable. The biggest challenge that we all must face is thatas these devices become more popular and we gradually give over our minds and bodies to technologywe dont lose what makes us human in the first place.

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Why This Brain-Hacking Technology Will Turn Us All Into Cyborgs - The Daily Beast