Your Daily Tech Dose

Quick Report

Microsoft has released Windows 11 24H2 aka 2024 Update, which is the first major update to Windows 11 since they skipped bi-annual release cadence and simply switched to yearly OS upgrades to streamline better quality control.

Windows 11 2024 is focussed on adding Generative AI aka GenAI with Copilot+ PCs with greater than 40 TOPS on NPUs featuring Intel Arrowlake, AMD Zen 5 and Snapdragon X Plus/Elite SoC/CPUs. The update brings super-resolution for Photos app, generative fill/erase in Paint app, Click-To-Do and Recall.

Quick Report

Microsoft addressed the privacy concerns of the recall feature on Copilot+ with a revamp. The feature requires Device Encryption, TPM 2.0, Kernel DMA protection, Virtualization based Code Integrity, Secure Boot and Bitlocker to view/record with the option to disable the feature if user’s feels unsafe.

Quick Report

Valve the makers of Steam released a new MOBA-like game called Deadlock which had serious cheating problems, despite being an invite-only beta testing. Valve has now turned the cheaters into frogs. It’s an anti-cheat system with conservative to avoid any false positives.

Quick Report

Razer announced the release of Synapse 4 after a year long beta testing yielding performance improvements of up to 30% with the help of multi-threaded architecture allowing users to create custom macros, settings configuration and
driver installations.

Quick Report

A high profile vulnerability with a CVSS score of 9.9 by RHEL and Canonical affecting widely used print server installed by default on many Linux and UNIX systems. The exploit discovered is a remote code execution vulnerability in the CUPS Print Scheduler allows attackers to run arbitrary code on the system without any user interaction required.

Quick Report

After Intel's Root Cause Analysis of 13th and 14th gen instability linked to microcode bug that delivered higher than optimal voltage degrading the CPU ultimately causing instability, Intel has released a microcode update to mitigate the issue. Now, Intel's research has determined that due to higher voltage supplied the CPUs now requires a higher minimum voltage called Vmin and the issue is linked to clock tree circuit in the IA core causing a shift in processor duty cycle resulting in system instability.

Quick Report

After Intel's disappointing FY results for Q3, Qualcomm is reportedly approaching Intel about a takeover bid according to WSJ rumours. The rumour states, Qualcomm was eyeing some of the client divisions related chip design and foundry services. At the moment not much concrete information is available. Even if the rumours are true, it is unlikely that Intel will accept a takeover bid to risk x86 licensing and other IPs.

Quick Report

One of the popular and best selling SATA SSDs from Crucial aka Micron is affected by buffer overflow attack for firmware version M3CR046. According to CVE-2024-42642 report, a specially crafted ATA packets from host to drive controller can lead to buffer overflow and memory corruption issues.

Quick Report

Jack Huynh, Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Computing and Graphics Business Group of AMD has announced plans to unify CDNA and RDNA into single UDNA architecture to compete against Nvidia CUDA and bring better development experience in a statement to Tom's Hardware.

Quick Report

TSMC has announced their Arizona factory is now on par with Taiwanese production in terms of yield and low wafer defects. This makes TSMC’s efforts to expand and fabricate advanced chips in American soil a success.
It will soon start volume production in 2025 and follow up with second fab in 2028 to advanced their ongong efforts to make 2nm and sub 2nm chips with investments around $65 Billion with $6 Billion from Chips Act and $5 Billion as loan from US govt.