NVIDIA Reduces the Price of its China-specific AI Chips
According to Reuters, NVIDIA recently reduced the price of its China-specialized AI chips in response to the negative impact of U.S. export restrictions and the challenge posed by Huawei’s competitors. NVIDIA launched three special US-compliant chips for the Chinese market after US export restrictions escalated last year, with the relatively strongest performer being the H20, but according to supply chain sources, the chip is in plentiful supply on the market, suggesting weak demand. By contrast, Huawei is believed to be significantly increasing shipments of its Ascend 910B chip this year, which outperforms the H20 on a number of key metrics, and according to government bidding data, only five state-backed buyers have tendered for the H20 in the past six months, compared to more than a dozen for the 910B.
The H20 reportedly sells for about 100,000 yuan each at Chinese distributors, and servers with eight cards cost about 1.1 to 1.3 million yuan, half the price of the H100 chip, which is banned from being exported to China. But because the H20 has more memory, it costs more to make, leading to a significant drop in profit margins. By comparison, the 910B sells for more than 120,000 yuan per chip at resellers, and servers with eight cards start at 1.3 to 1.5 million yuan per unit. In its first-quarter earnings report released last Wednesday, NVIDIA said the company’s business volume in China fell sharply due to sanctions, and that it expects the Chinese market to remain highly competitive in the future.
Apple Music’s Top 100 Albums
Apple Music’s recently released “100 Best Albums” list was voted on by a panel of about 250 people, including employees, musicians and record executives, and the results were significantly different from similar lists in the past, according to the Wall Street Journal.
According to the report, the list was created by the team listing each of the 25 best albums of their choice, and the votes were then aggregated and counted. The voting was preceded by face-to-face discussions among the team members. Additionally, unlike previous Best of lists, which were more classic in nature, Apple said the list was forward-thinking, taking into account albums released more recently. For example, there were more entries from the 2010s than the 1960s; the No. 1 song “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” only reached No. 10 on the Rolling Stone list; Taylor Swift’s entry was 2014’s “1989” instead of the more classic “Fearless” and “Red”; and so on. In response, Apple Music’s VP said he didn’t care about causing controversy because ‘it’s a success if it sparks a conversation between users and the industry’. Apple also denied online skepticism that the list reads like it was generated by ChatGPT, saying that it has always placed a strong emphasis on hand-picking.
iTerm2 Changes AI Features to Plug-ins Due to Criticisms
On May 23rd, iTerm2, the well-known open-source terminal emulator for macOS, announced that it was moving the AI features added in the previous version out of the main program and replacing them with optional plug-ins, following strong opposition. In the recently released version 3.5.0, iTerm2 added a GPT integration feature that allows users to fill in their API key, ask questions to modeling services compatible with the OpenAI API format, and have the resulting answers automatically populated into the terminal. Although this feature is turned off by default, many users still expressed their dissatisfaction, citing reasons such as questioning the practicality, worrying about the leakage of private information, objecting to the increase in the complexity of the code base, and the company’s IT policy that prohibits the use of any software that contains AI networking capabilities. On the other hand, there are many users who see no real risk in the feature and regret the harsh comments the author has faced, as well as the harsh criticism of the open source project. In response, developer George Nachman teasingly replied to the issue, saying that changing the AI functionality to a plug-in had two main purposes: to make it easier for employees whose companies are full of code that prohibits risk but can’t afford to deploy a device management service, and to reassure those who hate AI but don’t want to look at the code to see how it’s implemented.
Other News
According to Apple Insider’s claims, macOS 15 will drastically tweak the look of system settings, re-categorizing them based on the importance of the setting item. Apple will also change Siri’s menu bar icon to a single color. Other interface updates include iCloud and AirDrop, among others.
According to Mark Gurman, in iOS 18, home screen icons will be freely placed and will support color changes. New AI features will be clearly labeled as ‘beta’ or ‘preview’. In addition, Safari 18, which will be released later this year, will have an updated interface that provides AI intelligent search, summarizes web page topics, recognizes page image content, and removes distracting elements with an ‘eraser’ function.