According to China’sMinistry of Finance, the 2025 central budget will allocate ¥398.12 billion yuan ($55 billion) for science and technology, a 10% increase from 2024. This allocation is the third-largest item in the budget, surpassed only by national defense and debt interest payments. The increase in spending on science and technology by 10%, or $5 billion, emphasizes that China wants to accelerate its national R&D this year, which will speed up its plans for self-reliance in sectors such as semiconductors....

Chinese President Xi Jinping told Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte at a recent meeting that efforts to limit China’s access to technological advancements would not deter the nation’s progress. This discussion came after the Netherlands imposed export controls on advanced chipmaking tools in alignment with U.S. efforts to restrict China’s access to advanced technology out of concern for nationalsecurity, according to a report by theAssociated Press. “The Chinese people also have the right to legitimate development, and no force can stop the pace of China’s scientific and technological development and progress,” Xi said....

The Biden administration has announced its plan to fund the development and production of glass packaging for semiconductors through theCHIPS Act. The $75 million contract was awarded to Absolics, an affiliate of the SK Group andSK hynix. U.S. Secretary of State Gina Raimondo praised the announcement in her press statement, saying “An important part of the success of President Biden’s CHIPS program is ensuring the United States is a global leader in every part of the semiconductor supply chain, and the advanced semiconductor packaging technologies Absolics is working on will help to achieve that goal, while also creating hundreds of jobs in Georgia....

Why you may trust Tom’s HardwareOur expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you.Find out more about how we test. Benchmarks and Final Analysis Our standard benchmarks and power tests are performed using the CPU’s stock frequencies (including any default boost/turbo) with all power-saving features enabled. We set optimized defaults in the BIOS and the memory by enabling the XMP profile....

Earlier today, watchful eyes spotted somekey updatesto the SteamDB listing for CD Projekt Red’sCyberpunk 2077which corresponded to a MacOS executable and depots being added to the game. The update is roughly in line with the “early 2025” timeframe given by CDPR on the MacOSCyberpunk 2077release [h/tNotebookcheck.net]. At the time of writing, we have yet to see any footage of the MacOS port running, but it has been promised to also support ray tracing on Mac models that actually support the functionality, namely Apple Silicon M4 Mac Minis and M3, M3 Pro, or M3 Max-based Macs....

Bought a new pair of headphones that won’t work, or your game keeps crashing midway during the boss fight? Drivers are often a significant source of frustration to users. More often than not, it is not entirely clear what we are supposed to do to update them. To make matters worse, when searching online for a fix, we see countless fraudulent websites that offer “free” driver update tools. This tutorial will show you every possible step to ensure that all your drivers are up to date....

DOOM has been ported to quantum computers, marking another milestone for this seminal 3D gaming title. However, the coder behind this feat admits that there is currently no quantum computer capable of executing (playing) this code right now. All is not lost, though, asQuandoomcan run on a classical computer, even a modest laptop, using a lightweight QASM simulator. Barcelona ICFO-based Quantum Information PhD student Luke Mortimer, AKA Lumorti, is behind this newest port of DOOM....

Amazonhas theAsus TUF Gaming A16 gaming laptoplisted for one of its best prices. This RTX 4060 laptop GPU-powered gaming rig usually costs around $1,299, but today, it’s discounted to just $1,099. As of writing, it’s unclear how long this offer will be available. Overall, this isn’t a bad deal for what you get. Not only does it come with an RTX 4060 laptop GPU, but it’s also paired with a pretty impressive screen....

Concerned and bemused owners of Gigabyte graphics cards continue to document harrowing signs of thermal putty leaking out of their graphics cards despite the company’s efforts to assuage fears that there’s nothing to worry about. Last month,Gigabyte addressed issues of thermal gel creep in its RTX 50-Series and AMDRadeonRX 9000 series GPUs, telling customers that in early production a slightly higher volume of gel was applied, which “may cause the excessive gel to appear more prominent, extended, and could potentially be separated from the designated area....

In 2023,GoogleandMicrosofteach consumed 24 TWh of electricity, surpassing the consumption of over 100 nations, including places like Iceland, Ghana, and Tunisia, according to an analysis byMichael Thomas. While massive energy usage means a substantial environmental impact for these tech giants, it should be noted that Google and Microsoft also generate more money than many countries. Furthermore, companies like Intel, Google, and Microsoft lead renewable energy adoption within the industry. Detailed analysis reveals that Google’s and Microsoft’s electricity consumption — 24 TWh in 2023 — equals the power consumption of Azerbaijan (a nation of 10....

Googlehas announced its latest quantum processor, dubbed Willow. In ablog post, the tech giant claims this state-of-the-art chip stands apart from competitors due to two major achievements: its incredible speed in computation benchmarks, and the way it reduces errors exponentially as qubits are scaled up. As per our headline, Willow is abenchmarkingbeast. Google tested the chip in the random circuit sampling (RCS) benchmark, which is claimed to be “the classically hardest benchmark that can be done on a quantum computer today....

House republicans are trying to sneak a 10-year pause on AI regulation into the Budget Reconciliation bill. Representative Brett Guthrie (R-KY), who chairs the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, introduced a provision to the Budget Reconciliation bill last Sunday night that will prevent states and local governments from enforcing any legislation on AI. According to404 Media, this limitation was inserted into an already controversial bill and would take away the power of individual states to regulate artificial intelligence as they would see fit....

An ISO image file is basically a virtual disk that stores data the same way as a physical disk would. You can even mount it on your Windows computer to access the data inside it like a physical drive. However, it is commonly used as a source file for burning some data to a CD or DVD. Another popular use of ISO files is for installing applications and even Windows OS through it....