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Annasha Dey is an NIT student, who apart from studying engineering is also a content writer. She has a great interest in photography, writing, reading novels, and travelling as well. She is a foodie who loves socializing and hanging out with her friends. She is also a trained Kathak dancer and a big fashion enthusiast. Dey also loves watching TV series, which includes F.R.I.E.N.D.S. and Big Bang Theory. To be a better writer she prefers to read more

Applied Materials

The Journey of Applied Materials from a small start-up to a pioneer in the electronics industry

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Applied Materials is one of the leading companies in the electronics industry to shape the future with excellent innovations in technology. Michael A. McNeilly founded the company in 1967 and since then it is striving to make our lives better in the modern era. The company not only aims to bring innovations but also works for making technology affordable for everyone. The contribution of the company forms the foundation of the most trending breakthroughs of this century like  Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Augmented Reality, etc. The company mainly focuses on supplying equipment and software that are required to build semiconductor chips. Applied Materials is currently based in Santa Clara, California, U.S.

The Foundational Story of Applied Materials

Michael A. McKeilly founded the company in 1967 and it went public in 1972. The company started diversifying in the following years and shifted its main focus from semiconductors. But, in 1976 when James C. Morgan became the CEO of the company it again went back to semiconductors only and sales started rising subsequently. In 1984, Applied Materials made a breakthrough as it became the first U.S. semiconductor equipment manufacturing company to spread its branches in Japan and China.

Applied Materials
Image Source: barrons.com

In the next decade, the company acquired two big Israeli companies with $285million. The company has made several acquisitions since 2000. It acquired Etec Systems Inc., Oramir Semiconductor Equipment Ltd., Baccini, etc. Another huge achievement for Applied Materials was in 2009 when it opened the world’s largest commercial solar energy research center and development facility. This solar technology center was established in China. Later this year, the company acquired Semitool Inc and in 2011 it acquired Varian Semiconductor.

In 2013, the company merged with Tokyo Electron and planned to change the name of this merged conglomerate to Eteris. But, unfortunately in 2015, the merger was scrapped due to some antitrust issues. In 2018, the company was listed in FORTUNE World’s Most Admired Companies. Applied Materials has always shown interest in making investments towards better education and improving several communities for the better well-being of people. Currently, the CEO of the company is Gary E. Dickerson who is aligning more than 21,000 employees to work for a better future.

Founder of Applied Materials: Michael A. McNeilly

Michael A. McNeilly has a very rich entrepreneurial experience as he started very young in his journey to reach excellence. Before co-founding Applied Materials, Michael A. McNeilly founded Apogee Chemicals when he was twenty-five. After three years, he co-founded Applied Materials. Michael received a loan of $7,500 from his father-in-law to start Applied Materials. When the company has found the name of the company was Applied Materials Technology but while filing an IPO Michael changed the name to Applied Materials.

In his entrepreneurial journey in the semiconductor industry, Michael became the co-recipient of the first SEMI award in the category of “Outstanding Contributions to the Semiconductor Industry.” He also served as a member of the board of directors in more than 30 companies. His journey just began with Apogee Chemicals and Applied Materials as he founded fourteen more companies after it. While he was in Applied Materials he issued over twenty patents. Michael passed away in 2005 but before he passed away he majorly contributed to semiconductor technology. Michael was also the recipient of the “Outstanding Contributions to NASA Technology Commercialization” from NASA.

Vision and goal of the company

Applied Materials designs highly sophisticated technologies and software for complex chips and displays for many companies. The main goal of the company is to help their customers build large capacity and faster memory chips with the help of Applied Material’s technology. The company also works for making high integrated and more efficient processors. Apart from contributing to creating chips and processors, the company also designs technologies for high-resolution displays. Around 30% of the total number of employees are dedicated to research and development and the company invests around $2billion annually for the same purpose. Currently, the company has more than 12,500 patents.

The company has a strong vision towards solving high-value problems providing equal focus from research purposes to customer support. Applied Materials also believe in establishing high-value collaboration and developing a strong work culture globally.

Xiaomi Mi 11

New Xiaomi Mi 11 launched globally on a virtual event: Features, price, and availability.

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On 8th February 2021, Xiaomi’s new Mi 11 launch was announced globally at an online event. The new Mi 11 is the flagship phone of the company that was unveiled in China in December 2020. Xiaomi Mi 11 comes with the Qualcomm Snapdragon processor of 888 SoC and many other jaw-dropping features to get added to your cart this year. Mi 11 has a storage of 256 GB along with a 2K display and a hole-punch design. The company along with revealing the Mi 11 also announced the launch of MIUI 12.5. It will also roll out across the globe.

MIUI 12.5 is going to give the customers a revamped UI experience as it will reduce the CPU usage of apps by 22 percent and also increase power efficiency by 15 percent. The new MIUI 12.5 will be incorporated in the upcoming models of Mi including Mi 11 which will be available in the second quarter of 2021. So, let’s have a detailed look into the specifications of Mi 11 along with its price and availability.

Specifications of Mi 11

The new Mi 11 will run on Android 10 integrated with the newly revealed MIUI 12.5. This new smartphone is featuring a dual sim (nano), 6.81 inches 2K display with 1440X3200 pixels AMOLED display Mi flagship product. The weight of the phone is 196 grams. The display of Mi 11 has Corning Gorilla Glass Victus protection along with 1,500 nits of peak brightness (Gadgets 360). The refresh rate of the display is 120Hz and the touch sampling rate goes up to 480Hz. As mentioned above, the phone is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 Soc. It also has an LPDDR5 8GB RAM.

The Mi phones are also famous for having a good quality camera system within an affordable price range. The new Mi 11 has a brilliant camera system that will be the first choice of many budding photographers and content creators out there. This new Mi 11 has a triple rear camera flaunting a primary sensor of 108 megapixels with a lens of aperture f/1.85. The lens is also provided with great optical stabilization. Along with it, the secondary lens has a 13-megapixel sensor with an ultra-wide-angle view.

Xiaomi Mi 11
Image Source: zee5.com

The aperture of the secondary lens is f/2.4 with a field of view of 123 degrees. Sit tight because that’s not all of it. The new Mi 11 has a telenacro shooter of 5 megapixels. It’s really unbelievable that a phone camera is decked up with so many features for the camera system and not to mention the integrated Artificial Intelligence system for adding features like Time Freeze, Freeze Frame, Magic Zoom, etc. The selfie camera, i.e., the front camera has a 20-megapixel sensor and that is the entire camera system of Mi 11.

The storage of Mi 11 is also adequate with 256 GB UFS 3.1 storage. The network connectivity options are 5G, 4G, LTE, Wifi, 6E, and Bluetooth 5.2. Mi 11 has a USB Type-C port and some of the other connectivity options are GPS/A-GPS, NFC, and Infrared (IR). The fingerprint sensor which is present in the display of Mi 11 can also be used as a heart rate sensor.  The battery of Mi 11 is a 4,600 mAh battery. Mi 11 supports the Mi Turbocharger of 55W and wireless charging of 50W. The reverse charging support of Mi 11 gives up to 10W of wireless charging. 

Price and availability

The price of Mi 11 starts from Rs 65,800 approximately. This price is set for the Mi 11 model with an 8GB + 128GB variant. The price of the Mi 11 providing 8GB and 256GB of storage is roughly Rs 70,100. Another variant of the Mi 11 which comes with the 12GB and 128GB combo is limited to the Chinese market. The phone comes in three color options which are Cloud White, Horizon Blue, and Midnight Grey. The phones offer a two-year warranty and one-time screen replacement which is for one year. Apart from the upcoming Mi 11 models this year, the company will also launch Mi 11 special edition which is going to be very exclusive.

Timnit Gebru

Two Google engineers resigned after the company fired AI researcher, Timnit Gebru

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A lot of disputes have been taking place in Alphabet Inc’s Google regarding ethics and work culture among the company’s employees. The intensity of the situation has been rattled as two engineers of Google resigned after the company dismissed the AI researcher Timnit Gebru. From the engineering department, one engineering director and a software developer quit Google and it’s a sign of not approving of the departure of Timnit Gebru.

Diversity and ethics have become a point of conflict on Google for some time now as David Baker, an employee of Google resigned last month. He worked at Google for sixteen years and during his departure, he said that Gebru’s dismissal “extinguished my desire to continue as a Googler”(witnessed by Reuters). David Baker worked as a director in the user safety division in Google. He also mentioned that the environment of Google was acting against the belief of diversity though it claimed otherwise. His exact words were “We cannot say we believe in diversity, and then ignore the conspicuous absence of many voices from within our walls.”

Resignation of Kannan

Vinesh Kannan, a software engineer who worked at Google resigned on Tuesday. On Wednesday, he tweeted about his resignation and that Google mistreated Timnit Gebru. He also mentioned April Christina Curley, an ex-employee of Google who claimed that she was wrongly fired by the company. The dismissal of April took place last year which means that the tension regarding diversity in work culture is going on in Google for a long time. Kannan also mentioned that both of them were wrong but Google declined to comment on this. The company has assured that it is trying its best to restore trust between the company and its employees, also it disputes April’s accusations.

Why the sudden disputes?

The tension regarding the departure of Timnit has been growing for the last few months. The workers in Google have demanded academic freedom and management commitments in the company’s research organization. In December, around 2,600 employees of Google signed a letter supporting Timnit, and last month more than 800 people joined a union to bring advancement in workplace protection.

The story of Timnit Gebru

Timnit Gebru is one of the most leading Black women who have a very impactful contribution in the field of ethical AI. Last year, Timnit was promoted by Google as the co-leader of a group focussed on ethical AI due to her remarkable performance in annual employee appraisal. After she was promoted, Jeff Dean, head of Google AI, only made a single comment regarding what she and her team are supposed to focus on. He mentioned that Timnit and her team should look forward to building software for processing human language that should abide by the AI principles of the company.

Timnit Gebru
Image Source: miro.medium.com

There was an exchange of email conversations between Timnit and Jeff during October 2020. Timnit informed Jeff that her team was working on a paper which was regarding the same area of understanding the complexity of language while Jeff told her that he would be interested in reading it. And, after six weeks of that conversation, Timnit was surprisingly fired by Google. She was on her vacation when she received the news.

Explaining Timnit’s departure

After Timnit was fired by Google, Jeff tried to explain the situation to his other employees. Jeff mentioned that the paper she and her team was working on didn’t meet the publication bar of the company. He also mentioned that the paper was missing relevant information regarding the recent improvements done in this field. While Timnit’s superiors tried to convince her to retract the paper Google’s Research team mentioned that the previous works of authors who claimed benefits of large language models were not scrutinized properly before approval. This created a lot of fuss questioning Google’s scrutiny process.

Google Stadia

Google announced the shut down of Stadia in-house game development studios

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On 1st Feb 2021, Google announced to shut down its internal game development for Stadia for not being able to meet high rising costs of the same. “Creating best-in-class games from the ground up takes many years and significant investment, and the cost is going up exponentially,” said Phil Harrison, VP, and general manager of Google Stadia, in a blog post. From now on, Google’s game streaming service will be entirely dependent on the titles of other external game developers and game publishers. It is really unfortunate to witness the internal cloud-based game streaming service of Google shut down within a couple of years.

When Stadia was launched in 2019, the internal game development unit was expected to make titles for the service. But, with a heavy chest, the company has declared yesterday about shutting the internal game development unit. The in-house game development is costly and monetarily the company is not planning to invest in it. Phil Harrison also mentioned that Jade Raymond, Head of Google Stadia’s Games and Entertainment, will quit the company.

About Google Stadia

Google Stadia is a platform where one can play any online modern games using your smart devices. One doesn’t need to download or install the Stadia platform. Anyone who wants to play online games on Stadia can do it from television using a Chromecast Ultra, desktop, laptop, smartphone ( currently Pixel 3 and 3a models). If one has an internet speed of at least 35Mbps, Google Stadia can stream 4K resolution gameplay with HDR at 60fps.

Google Stadia
Image Source: pcgamer.com

In 2019, the company revealed the full online gaming platform where it provides two different options for playing games. One needs to buy a $10 per month Stadia Pro subscription. The user can either access Stadia’s game library on a remote server or can download and install the games on the computer. Some of the available games on Google Stadia are Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Attack on Titan 2: Final Battle, Baldur’s Gate 3, Borderlands 3, Cake Bash, Celeste, Crayta, The Crew 2, etc.

Future prospect of Google Stadia

Google launched the Stadia platform with the hope to stream online games across the globe. The best advantage of playing in Google Stadia is you don’t have to download or install any software and have access to the game anywhere and anytime. Recently with the success of Cyberpunk 2077, Google Stadia has proved the flexibility of this online game streaming service at a global level. Though the internal game development studio has been shut down, Google will still invest in the Stadia platform to give its users and potential customers the best cloud gaming experience ever. In the blog post by Harrison, he also mentioned that Google Stadia will still work to stream games on every possible screen in the future.

Google Stadia in 2021 has plans to invest and help the independent game developers take advantage of the Stadia platform and deliver their games directly to the players. Stadia’s gaming infrastructures are impressive and thus Google here has an opportunity to partner with interested gaming companies who want a streaming service for their games. In this way, Stadia can become a long-term sustainable solution for many game developers out there and big enterprises in the gaming industry as well. The internal development team, SDG&E will move to different roles in the Stadia. Currently, Google Stadia will focus more on establishing strong partnerships.

Other gaming opportunities

With Google Stadia’s in-house game development shutting down, new opportunities are also rising simultaneously in other companies. Asus in partnership with AFK Gaming has launched the ROG Academy Programme in India. This new program is bringing immense opportunities for all the budding game developers to participate in this contest and win existing opportunities. The gaming culture is constantly evolving in India and abroad thus opening new windows of opportunities and taking gaming seriously as a profession. The independent game developers can also use Google Stadia to stream their games and deliver them to the users if they are good enough. With time, more chances will come in the way of game developers in the upcoming years.

Asus ROG Academy Programme

Asus to recruit six gaming candidates in India for ROG Academy Program.

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Who would have thought a decade earlier that gaming would become a profession in our country? There are many gaming enthusiasts out there who are working hard to make their passion turn into professions. And, gamers are certainly one of them. To help the potential professional gamers of India, Asus has publicly announced the recruitment of six gamers in India to join the ROG Academy Programme.

Asus through their ROG Academy Programme will train these gamers at a professional level so that they can represent the brand both locally and globally. This program will help the best gamers in India to showcase their talent and pursue gaming as e-sports players professionally. Asus will arrange this program with the support from AFK Gaming to provide adequate and proper tutelage to these budding gamers of India.

Asus ROG Academy Program

ROG Academy Programme is a one-year long program divided into four quarterly sessions. This program focuses on the game Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, one of the most popular games in esports. Registration for this program will go on from 1st February to 10th February 2021. After rigorous selection procedures, six final candidates will be selected. These final candidates will get Rs 1,00,000 after completing three-month training and a monthly stipend of Rs 15,000 with a bonus during these three months.

Asus ROG Academy Program
Image Source: asus.in/ROG-academy

Gadgets 360 spoke to Arnold Su, Asus India’s Business Head, and Siddharth Nayyar, Co-founder, and Director of AFK Gaming to get detailed insight about this initiative in India and about the selection process. Based on the questions Gadgets 360 asked them, here is more information about the ROG Academy Programme and the future of esports in India.

Growth potential in terms of the overall gaming market in India

According to Arnold Su (AS), computer gaming can be divided into two sections, hardware, and software. In India, PC gaming has been booming since 2016 increasing the sale of PC gaming units to almost 9 folds in 2020. And, when it comes to e-sports, there are around 17 million active spectators in our country. ROG is mainly focussing on investing in the youths of India. The gaming culture has improved as the data plans have become affordable but still, infrastructure for e-sports has huge rooms for improvements.

Siddharth Nayyar (SN) says that the gaming market, in general, is growing a lot and that people are switching from mobiles to PC gaming for a better experience. More engagement can be expected in the competitive gaming space as companies like Riot and Valve are investing in the e-sports space.

What does the program plan on achieving?

Asus has been conducting ROG tournaments in India since 2017 so there is a scope to find more talents. During the pandemic, the ROG Showdown tournaments attracted a lot of gamers. Due to limitations to choices of entertainment during the pandemic, many people switched to mobile gaming and the mobile gamers witched to PC. The gaming industry boomed during the lockdown which is expected to continue even after the end of the pandemic. This is the reason Asus decided to launch this academy program to train more games and make them skillful. This is a unique program in the e-sports space first started by Asus.

Asus ROG Academy Program
Image Source: asus.in/ROG-academy

The selection process for the program

Applicants from 16-years old and above can enroll through participants between 16-18 years need parent’s consent to participate. 50 candidates will be selected in the first phase after an online assessment based on the knowledge of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. In the second phase, the selected candidates will play Counter-Strike: Global Offensive in teams which will be hosted by a server called SoStronk. 20 candidates will be shortlisted for the third phase from where six top candidates will be selected for the program. The applicants will need a basic gaming setup for participation. Currently, the program is only focusing on Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, and other games will be added later. The gaming perspective is slowly changing for parents as well. E-sports will be added in the Olympics of 2024 which will motivate more and more gamers to pursue it as a professional training sport.

E-sports challenges in India

Though the overall e-gaming scenario is improving in India, infrastructure and broadband are the two major challenges. The company is trying to reach out to tier-3 and tier-2 markets in India for broadening the gaming base. Siddharth Nayyar also mentioned that gaming culture will skyrocket in India if these markets are exposed to ASUS gaming laptops and good internet.

Airtel 5G

Airtel 5G service demonstration goes live in Hyderabad

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On Thursday, Airtel gave a live demonstration of its 5G network in Hyderabad. The company claims that it is the first telecom service provider in India to successfully give a live demonstration of its 5G service. According to Airtel, the newly launched 5G network has the capability to operate over the existing network technology of both mid-bands and sub-GHz bands.

Yesterday, the company successfully operated both 5G and 4G concurrently over the existing liberalized spectrum in the 1800MHz band through the Non-Standalone (NSA) network technology. (Gadgets 360) Airtel 5G service will increase the speed of existing technology by 10 times with 10 times latency and 100 times concurrency. This will help in improving the overall user experience from attending online calls to downloading movies and TV shows.

More about Airtel 5G network

Airtel worked jointly with Ericsson, its equipment partner to bring this new experience to its users. The company has claimed that the 5G network has the capability to work over existing network technology hence can operate in mid-bands of range 1800MHz, 2100MHz, and 2300MHz. The 5G service will also operate in the sub-GHz band of frequency 800MHz and 900MHz.The existing Airtel users can use 5G services by software upgrades as said by the operator.

Airtel is now waiting for the permission from Department of Telecom (DoT) to deploy 5G services dynamically. As both the 4G and the 5G services can be operated through the same spectrum block, it will only take months for the company to make it available. Though the live service in Hyderabad was successful yesterday, Airtel didn’t mention any timeline about the commercial rollout of the 5G services. But, the CEO of Bharti Airtel mentioned that the company is waiting for government approvals. As soon as they have the permission and enough quantity of the right spectrum band, they will make the rollout of the Airtel 5G service.

Gopal Vittal, MD, and CEO of Bharti Airtel said that made a comment that India has the potential to become the global center for innovations in 5G technology. He further said that to build a strong 5G ecosystem all the devices, applications, and network innovation should come together.

Demonstration of Airtel 5G service

Airtel carried out the 5G demonstration in Oppo Reno 5 Pro and Oppo Find X2 Pro. The company claims that there are more than 20 different smartphones, 5 models, in India that are ready to use the Airtel 5G services. The existing users of Airtel don’t need to upgrade their sim cards for 5G usage unlike what we used to do earlier for changing sim cards to 3G or 4G network. Since both the 4G and 5G service can be provided from the same spectrum block, things have become a lot simpler and easier in the switching part. The live demonstration of the 5G network is only available in some selected stores in Hyderabad.

Airtel 5G
Image Source: gadgets.ndtv.com

Jio’s attempt to launch 5G in India

Apart from Bharti Airtel, its leading competitor in the Indian telecom market, Reliance Jio has also started testing its 5G services. Recently, the company has announced the advanced 5G testing it is carrying out this year. The company has also mentioned that very soon it will be bringing the 5G service of Reliance Jio in India probably this year itself. Though the operator has promised to test its 5G network at a scale, the company hasn’t announced a date yet for any live demonstrations like Airtel. It is very likely that Jio might roll out the 5G services in the second half of this year. In a recent statement made by Mukesh Ambani, Chairperson of Reliance Industries, he said that the company will make the 5G services available at an affordable rate everywhere in the country.

6 months notice period for 5G rollout

Previously, the Department of Telecom (DoT) has announced that any telecom service provider should give a one-year notice before launching any new technology using the seven frequency bands that will be up for auction. But, yesterday DoT reduced the one-year notice period to 6-months. For the auction of the seven frequency bands, the government has planned to put a rate of Rs 3.92 lakh crore.