Intel previews the next-gen Thunderbolt, based on USB4 v2, with up to 80Gbps both ways, or 120Gbps one way and 40Gbps the other for “video-intensive usages” (Mitchell Clark/The Verge)

Mitchell Clark / The Verge:
USB Promoter Group says USB 4 version 2 will enable speeds up to 80Gbps, using existing 40Gbps USB Type-C passive cables and new 80Gbps USB Type-C active cables  —  USB 4 version 2 promises 80 Gbps speeds  —  The next version of USB could be one of the fastest connectors we’ve seen yet.

Jordan Novet / CNBC:
The Pentagon awards Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Oracle a cloud-computing contract of up to $9B each through 2028 under the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability  —  – Of the four companies receiving cloud-computing contracts from the Pentagon, all of them had received requests for bids from the U.S. federal agency last year.

Jay Alammar:
An illustrated guide showing how Stable Diffusion generates images from text using a CLIP-based text encoder, an image information creator, and an image decoder  —  AI image generation is the most recent AI capability blowing people’s minds (mine included).

Gavin Bonshor / AnandTech:
Intel Raptor Lake Core i9-13900K and i5-13600K review: improved V/F curve and more efficiency cores compared to Alder Lake and highly competitive with AMD Zen 4  —  Today marks the release of Intel’s 13th generation Core processor series, codenamed Raptor Lake.

Tom Warren / The Verge:
A review of Intel’s $329 Arc A770 and $289 Arc A750: ideal for 1080p gaming, slick design, and good performance, but weird driver bugs and few software controls  —  Intel’s GPU effort is impressive but early … Intel’s Arc graphics cards are finally here, and they’re priced to take on Nvidia’s popular RTX 3060 for budget PC gamers.

Nilay Patel / The Verge:
Q&A with Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger on returning to Intel, resetting the culture, replacing executives, decision making, long-term plans, new chip plants, and more  —  How CEO Pat Gelsinger changed the culture at Intel and bet big on the silicon heartland … Pat Gelsinger is the CEO of Intel.