TSMC Allegedly Increasing Chip Prices By 20 Percent Amidst Ongoing Shortage

TSMC is reportedly increasing the prices of its chips, the company told its clients earlier in the week. According to a report by WSJ (paywall), the semiconductor manufacturer plans on raising its prices by as much as 10% for its advanced chips and 20% for less advanced components.

The announcement clearly isn’t happy or welcoming news, given that the world is still suffering from an ongoing chip shortage that many experts and industry leaders say could last well into 2022 and the early months of 2023. On top of that, TSMC’s price hike will most definitely be reflected within the final bill of finished products that use its components.

That list, by the way, unsurprisingly includes electronic goods like laptops, phones, PC components, and game consoles like the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. Product that, by the way, are made by equally big name brands like Apple, AMD, NVIDIA, and Qualcomm, to name a few.

There is, of course, a silver lining of sorts in TSMC’s announcements. Raising the prices means that, for the first time since the pandemic began, demand for its chips could ultimately reduce and, in turn, take some pressure off already constricted supplies. At least, until its new factories in the US and Taiwan become operational.

Epic Games Launcher Reportedly Drains 20 Percent More Battery Than Steam On Laptops

Game launchers are notorious for causing systems to consume more power and if you’re on a laptop, leaving those programs to operate in the background while not connected to a power source clearly means that its battery is going to run out of juice a lot faster. With the Epic Games launcher, it’s actually even worse.

A study by PC World found that running the Epic Games Store (EGS) launcher in the background of a Microsoft Surface Pro 7+ equipped with an Intel 11th generation Ice Lake CPU consumed up to 20% more battery power than when the Steam launcher was active. Moreover, the site found that running just the Steam launcher alone in the background made little to no impact on the battery life of the Surface Pro 7+.

Statistically, the laptop’s battery lasted a total of 587 minutes with Steam active, while running it with the EGS launcher reduced that time to 482 minutes.

It’s a similar story with a Ryzen-based Surface Laptop 3, in which PC World noted that a clear run with the Steam launcher active depleted its battery in 472 minutes, while another run with the EGS launcher depleted it faster by 434 minutes; that’s approximately an 8% difference.

This marks the second time that Epic Games’ launcher has come under the spotlight. Back at the end of 2020, the digital distribution store gained attention when it was discovered that just running the app in the background was causing AMD Ryzen CPUs to run 20°C higher than average.

It was discovered that the surge in temperature was being caused by the launcher sending data to a server belonging to Epic Games. Then, as now, the only solution to the issue was to simply disable or shut down the launcher.