Intel will reportedly lay off thousands of employees as PC sales slow

Intel had long been expecting a decline in PC sales after a period of heightened demand due to work-and-study-from-home arrangements brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. In July, it admitted to Nikkei that it was going to raise the prices of its processors and other chips due to “inflationary pressures” later this year. Turns out that may not be the only move Intel is making to weather the declining PC market. According to Bloomberg, Intel is planning to cut thousands of jobs and could make the announcement around the same time it’s releasing its third quarter earnings report on October 27th. 

The company slashed its sales and profit forecasts for 2022 back in July, when it said that it expects revenue for the year to be $11 billion less than previously projected. Chief Executive Officer Pat Gelsinger said during its earnings call for the second quarter that the company “will look to take additional actions in the second half of the year” to improve profits. Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Mandeep Singh said the layoffs could reduce the costs Intel incurs to keep the company running by around 10 to 15 percent. Singh also said that those costs could be worth at least $25 to $30 billion.

Mobileye, the the self-driving tech firm that Intel had purchased for $15.3 billion back in 2017, recently filed for an IPO. Intel intends to keep most of what it earns from the IPO for itself and to help finance the chip factories it’s planning to build. But projected earnings from the offering may not be enough to prevent the mass layoffs, which will affect various divisions within the company. Certain groups, such as the sale and marketing department, will reportedly see their numbers reduced by up to 20 percent. 

Over the past year, Intel took steps to achieve its goal of expanding its foundry business. It earmarked $20 billion to build a massive chip-making facility in Ohio, which it intends to turn into the biggest “silicon manufacturing location on the planet.” The company also purchased Tower Semiconductor, a chipmaker catering to clients across industries, for $5.4 billion. There seems to be no indication that those expansion plans are changing, and Bloomberg said that Intel intends to pursue the goals it set for itself as a leaner company.

Hyundai wants all of its vehicles to support over-the-air updates by 2025

Though already having some success with its Ioniq lineup, Hyundai has far bigger plans for its EV future — including taking a page from Tesla in terms of software updates. The automaker just unveiled a new roadmap, saying it’ll invest $12.6 billion to transform its lineup across brands into “Software Defined Vehicles” (SDVs). 

As part of that, it’s developing new platforms and a new Connected Car Operating System (CCOS). It wants all its vehicles (both ICE and EV) to be over-the-air (OTA) capable by 2025, at which point it expects to have 20 million connected vehicles on the road.

The first leg in Hyundai’s plans is two new EV platforms called eM and eS for Hyundai, Kia and Genesis vehicles based on its Integrated Modular Architecture (IMA) announced earlier this year. The eM platform will be used for consumer EVs in all segments, offering 50 percent more range on a charge than current models, according to Hyundai. It’ll also support Level 3 and higher self-driving levels. Meanwhile, the eS platform is designed for logistics, deliveries and other business segments. 

The idea is to have more more modularity and standardization for components like batteries and motors, helping streamline production and cut costs. Critically, it’ll also let Hyundai use the same vehicle controller across brands and segments, making OTA software and “Feature on Demand” (FoD) upgrades possible.

Hyundai Motor Group 'Unlock the Software Age'
Hyundai Motor Group

Another key part of the roadmap is the software platform. The group will use something Hyundai calls the Connected Car Operating System (ccOS), applied to all controllers and using “extremely high computing power.” To achieve that, it’s working with NVIDIA on loading an optimized version of ccOS onto NVIDIA DRIVE, its next-gen chipset for autonomous driving and other vehicle functions. 

Speaking of that, it also plans to advance its autonomous driving tech. The ccOS operating system is a key part of that, processing all the data collected by cameras, radars and LiDARs mounted in vehicles. Hyundai hopes to use ccOS to commercialize Level 3 vehicles soon, and go to Level 4 and 5 “in due course.” 

“This year, the Group will apply an advanced Highway Driving Pilot (HDP) on the Genesis G90, which is a Level 3 technology for autonomous driving based on the second-generation integrated controller,” said Hyundai’s autonomous driving head Woongjun Jang. “The Group is also developing its Remote Parking Pilot (RPP) for Level 3 autonomous driving.”

To accomplish all that, Hyundai Group plans to invest 18 trillion won ($12.6 billion) by 2030, which will go toward building a Global Software Center and be ploughed into research. “This will pace the Group at the forefront of providing entirely new mobility solutions as society changes, transportation means evolve, and software defined vehicles become commonplace,” according to the press release. 

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Blizzard is giving away freebies to ‘Overwatch 2’ players to apologize for its rocky launch

Blizzard previously admitted that Overwatch 2’s launch, which was spoiled by a bunch of bugs, DDoS attacks and other issues, has not met players of the company’s expectations. While the company has made a lot of progress to make the game playable — a lot of players couldn’t even log in at first — its work is far from done. Now, the developer is trying to make it up to fans by giving out freebies and running events. It will hold several Double Match XP weekends to give players the chance to rack up points and rank up. Blizzard will announce specific dates for the events soon. 

It will also give players who log in from October 25th until the time Season One ends a Cursed Captain Reaper Legendary skin and a Health Pack Weapon Charm. Both items will automatically be added to people’s collection when they log in within that window of time. In its announcement, Blizzard said that it will deploy more stability updates, starting with another patch scheduled for release this week. It also said that it’s monitoring the game closely for any more issues and bugs that emerge. 

The developer keeps a public list of known issues on its forum, but players are finding more that it has yet to acknowledge. Users are reporting problems regarding specific characters in the game, such as Mei, whose ice wall has been behaving inconsistently, according to Kotaku. Blizzard even had to pull two heroes out of the game completely to address a few bugs in the ability kits. 

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