A new year has come, 2021, and therefore it's time to remember what 2020 will be remembered for in the field of high technologies. In this article, we will refresh our memory of the key innovations presented last year, as well as recall the main events that attracted maximum attention and will certainly affect what will happen next.
We traditionally start the new year 2021 with an overview material, which deals with the key events of the past year in the field of high technologies. Despite all its "peculiarities", the past year turned out to be extremely rich in events in the IT industry. And now you will see it for yourself.
Of course, the past year has changed a lot, if not everything. But unlike many traditional businesses that have been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic, IT hasn't fallen into hibernation. On the contrary, for her, 2020 became a time of global and active transformation, which in the end turned out to be largely successful. However, the first half of the year turned out to be rather boring in the IT-sphere: exhibitions, which usually filled the first months of each year with events, were canceled, and a lull ensued until everyone got used to the new realities. But the second half of 2020 turned out to be very eventful and was marked by the launch of many important technologies and most interesting products, which we will discuss below.
New generation consoles released - PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S
November 2020 saw one of the most anticipated events in the gaming industry, which can only be compared with the release of Cyberpunk 2077, which we will talk about a little later. We are talking about the release of a new generation of consoles. Released Sony PlayStation 5 in two different versions (with and without a drive), while Microsoft introduced just two consoles - Flagship Xbox Series X and more accessible Xbox S Series.
All consoles received AMD hardware platform. The set-top boxes use eight-core processors based on AMD Zen 2 architecture and graphics with second-generation AMD Navi architecture. On a new round of the war of consoles, the leadership in "naked" performance was captured by the Xbox Series X: the most powerful chip found use in it. But there are no complaints about the PlayStation 5 either. : it offers very high performance, and the games look amazing on all new consoles.
The key features of the next-generation set-top boxes, in addition to increased performance, support for real-time ray tracing, as well as the transition to solid-state drives with PCIe 4.0 interface for data storage. The first provided a more lively and realistic picture in games, and the second fundamentally accelerated the loading of the games themselves, as well as the locations in them.
And everything would be great if not for the severe deficit. It is very difficult to buy new generation consoles. And that's putting it mildly. For example, the last batch of PlayStation 5 on the M.Video network was sold out in a matter of minutes. You can only see the consoles in stock on Avito, eBay, and other similar sites, but, of course, at much higher prices than in stores. Affordability has become an excellent breeding ground for the half-forgotten phenomenon of speculation to flourish. You can go to any of the secondary trading sites yourself and assess what its scale is. In Britain, for example, speculators bought 3.5 thousand Sony consoles, and on eBay, the earnings of sellers from reselling Sony and Microsoft consoles are estimated at almost $ 60 million. It is not yet clear when the situation will improve, and therefore we can only wait and hope.
AMD and NVIDIA Unveil Powerful Next Generation Graphics Cards
In September 2020, NVIDIA introduced the GeForce RTX 30 series graphics cards built on Ampere GPUs. The new architecture provides a huge leap in performance over the previous generation. For example, NVIDIA itself believes that the GeForce RTX 3080 is twice as fast as the RTX 2080. In our tests, the RTX 3080 was on average 35% faster than the RTX 2080 Super, and up to 24% faster than the previous flagship, the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti. The growth is really quite good - in the last generation, for example, this was not even close.
But if NVIDIA simply took another step forward again, having improved performance indicators compared to its own previous generation of video cards, then AMD faced a much more difficult task - to catch up with a competitor that had come off in the upper price segment in recent years. In October, the company introduced the Radeon RX 6000 series accelerators on Navi 21 graphics chips, and they turned out to be really good. For example, according to our tests, in games, the Radeon RX 6800 XT graphics card lagged behind its direct competitor, the GeForce RTX 3080, by an average of only 5%. In addition, new AMD GPUs have received support for hardware-accelerated ray tracing. True, according to tests, they do not get it in the best way. But a start has been made, and this is the main thing.
One could say that AMD as a whole coped with the task of imposing competition on NVIDIA, but the problem is that so far this is only theoretical competition. It is impossible to record real success due to the total shortage of new generation video cards. And this applies to both AMD and NVIDIA products. True, with the latter, things are better, since they came out back in September, and although supplies are limited, they are at least regular. As a result, it is still possible to buy "green" cards, albeit at noticeably inflated prices. But AMD video cards, which went on sale only in November, are almost impossible to find in stores. Some retailers have still not been able to service even first orders... But sometime in the coming year, the situation will get better. Should get better!
AMD finally overtook Intel in processor performance. Even in games
In addition to video cards, AMD released another important breakthrough product in 2020 - in October, AMD Ryzen 5000 processors based on the Zen 3 architecture was presented. Thanks to them, it confidently surpassed Intel in performance of desktop platforms, and even in games.
The new chips offer the same number of cores as their predecessors, as well as slightly higher clock speeds and an improved 7nm process technology. The main source of performance gains was architectural improvements. AMD itself announced an impressive 19% increase in the number of instructions executed per clock (IPC) compared to the previous generation. And that's a lot.
According to AMD itself, the 12-core Ryzen 9 5900X in gaming performance is on average 7% ahead of the Core i9-10900K in games in Full HD resolution. Our tests showed that the frame rate in Full HD resolution jumped by 25-30% when switching from Zen 2 to Zen 3, and in many games, the Ryzen 9 5900X and Ryzen 9 5950X really outperform the Intel Core i9-10900K, which was previously considered the best gaming processor.
But now, suddenly, on Intel's side the price! AMD has raised the prices of its next-generation processors by $ 50 over their predecessors. In addition, it is now impossible to find Ryzen 5000 at recommended prices - like video cards, AMD processors are also in short supply. As a result, so far the situation is such that AMD offers are faster, while Intel is more profitable.
Apple decided to abandon Intel and released computers on its own processor
Apple has marked the computer revolution this year. Last summer, she announced a decision to phase out Intel processors in Mac computers. And in the fall, the first Apple computer processor, the M1 chip, was presented.
Apple's debut computer processor is built on the ARM architecture. It uses a bundle of four energy-efficient cores for common tasks and four productive cores for serious workloads. It also has very powerful built-in graphics, as well as a neuro module for working with AI. In other words, this is by no means some kind of compromise solution, but a completely full-fledged processor suitable for use in modern mid-range systems. And according to tests, Apple did it really well: the M1 performs well both in applications adapted for ARM, and copes very well with x86 applications running through an emulator. Moreover, computers based on this chip can even be played!
So far, the Apple M1 processor has debuted only in the company's younger computers: the desktop Mac mini, as well as the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro 13 laptops. But in the future, the company plans to transfer all its computers to proprietary processors, including even workstations. Moreover, it took only two years for the transition, that is, by about mid-2022, all computers under the Apple brand will be based on their own chips with the ARM architecture. Rumors of very powerful Apple processors with a large number of cores and very high performance are already circulating. In addition, Apple also designs graphics. So in the foreseeable future, she will be able to completely say goodbye to AMD video cards.
SpaceX began taking people into space, distributing the internet and building strange rockets
In May last year, a truly epoch-making event took place in the world cosmonautics - for the first time in history, a private company launched a spacecraft with a crew onboard into space. We are talking about SpaceX of the notorious Elon Musk and the launch of the Crew Dragon spacecraft, which successfully docked with the ISS, and later took some of the astronauts from there. The flight was the result of a great nine years of work.
This was a test mission in which NASA assessed the possibility of using Musk's spacecraft for regular flights to the ISS. In recent years, the United States has used the services of Roscosmos and Soyuz rockets to deliver astronauts to the ISS. But since the test flight was successful, now the United States can refuse to cooperate with Roskosmos, and as proof of this, the first regular delivery of astronauts to the ISS using the SpaceX Crew Dragon took place in the fall.
I must say that in the past year SpaceX launched a hitherto unprecedented activity, even if you do not take into account manned flights. During the year, 26 Falcon 9 rockets were successfully launched, and in 24 cases their first stage successfully returned back. In addition, in the past year, SpaceX continued to work on the creation of the Starship super-heavy rocket. Prototypes with a strange appearance, similar to pepelats, passed fire tests, were launched at different heights, and also exploded spectacularly. In general, the work was in full swing.
Finally, over the past year, SpaceX has launched many small spacecraft to deploy its Starlink satellite internet. At the moment, a group of about 900 microsatellites is flying over the Earth. Thanks to this, last year Starlink began providing Internet access services in test mode, so far only in the north of the US and the south of Canada. The pleasure is not cheap: you need to pay $ 500 for the terminal, and the subscription fee is $ 99. Nevertheless, users get speeds above 100 Mbps and quite acceptable latencies - quite good, especially for remote areas and rural areas, which the project is currently focused on.
The United States has strengthened sanctions against China: Huawei, WeChat, Tik Tok, DJI, SMIC and others fell under the distribution
The administration of US President Donald Trump last year continued to wage a trade war with China, the main victim of which was Huawei. The sanctions steadily increased throughout the year, and in addition to Huawei, many other large companies from the Middle Kingdom were also hit.
The United States last year deprived a number of Chinese companies of the opportunity to buy equipment and software that used American technology to create. This noticeably crippled Huawei's business - the company can no longer order the production of HiSilicon processors from Taiwanese TSMC and is also deprived of the opportunity to buy modern chips with 5G support from MediaTek and Qualcomm. It touched on other key components as well. However, subsequently, some manufacturers were still able to obtain licenses from the United States for the right to supply Huawei with their products, which slightly eased its position.
However, due to the sanctions, Huawei was forced to sell its successful Honor brand to a group of 40 companies. In this way, it was possible to withdraw it from sanctions, and in the very near future, we will meet with the new flagship Honor smartphones. In the coming 2021, Honor plans to sell more than 100 million devices, which looks very ambitious.
Other companies were also hooked on US sanctions. Trump tried to ban TikTok, or at least force the American division to sell it. The Chinese messenger WeChat was also banned in the US. But in the end, the situation with Chinese applications more or less settled down - while they work, and then their fate will be decided by the administration of the new American president.
Also this year, the most advanced Chinese semiconductor manufacturer SMIC has suffered from sanctions, which was cut off from suppliers of lithography equipment and consumables. As a result, his plans for the transition to a 7-nm process technology have not yet come true. And by the end of the year, the world's largest drone manufacturer DJI fell out of favor with the United States.
Cyberpunk 2077 finally came out and immediately disgraced
December 10, 2020, became a significant date for fans of computer games - on this day the most anticipated game of the last time was released - Cyberpunk 2077. After many transfers, the project announced back in 2021 by the Polish studio CD Projekt Red, which gave us the Witcher games, is finally here.
But the developers would be better off postponing the release again. Despite the years of development, the product turned out to be frankly raw, especially when it comes to the console versions. The game has a lot of bugs and problems, and it does not look the best on old consoles. The PC version did not escape the problems, but things are not so bad here. To be fair, we note that the developers have already released a number of patches that at least partially smoothed the situation and fixed a number of critical flaws.
However, programs to return the game to stores have been launched, CD Projekt Red's shares have collapsed, and, to top it off, lawsuits are pending against the company. However, even so, Cyberpunk 2077 was marked by the largest pre-orders and sales in the history of the gaming market. The overwhelming majority of players believe that over time the problems will be fixed, and on the next-generation consoles, versions of Cyberpunk 2077 for which will be released sometime this year, the game will immediately turn out to be normal.
Tech companies are the main beneficiaries of the pandemic
The coronavirus has accelerated the spread and adoption of technology in a wide variety of areas. People were forced to turn to them to overcome the restrictions that have arisen due to the pandemic. As a result, many IT companies have played into the hands of the coronavirus, because their services and products have become necessary for a large number of people at once.
For example, one of the most demanded services in 2020 is video calling. It allowed people to communicate with family and friends, many companies, thanks to video communication, managed to organize normal work during quarantine, and schoolchildren and students were able to continue gnawing the granite of science without leaving their homes. On this wave, the super-popular Zoom program, featuring the simplest interface among the alternatives, has grown its user base 30 times: in December 2019, about 10 million people used the Zoom service daily, and in April 2020, more than 300 million. backdrop, Zoom shares were expected to rally, at their peak offering yields of 750% year-on-year, and the company even broke into the top 20 most valuable US companies in the tech sector.
Also, the forced isolation forced users to actively update their home computers. Sales of desktops, laptops, and even tablets have skyrocketed accordingly. The sales of the latter have reached their maximum since 2013. Sales of gaming systems also increased, because people needed to somehow have fun, and video games were the easiest and most affordable way of leisure at home. And the games themselves were selling very well and collected records online.
Online trading has also grown dramatically. With closed shopping malls, many simply had no choice and had to shop online. Thanks to this, shares of the same Amazon rose in price over the year from about $ 1800 to $ 3300 (plus 80%). Online sales of various equipment, in particular laptops and smartphones, have been setting records throughout the past year. However, everything ended quite predictably: record demand, together with various production and logistics problems, caused a shortage of many devices in the second half of the year. Now electronics manufacturers simply cannot cope with the release of the required amount of components, but, as we have already said, there will be more.
In general, in 2020, many large and not so technology companies have significantly increased their capitalization. For example, Apple has risen in price by 150% since March, Alphabet, the parent company of Google, has become more expensive since the beginning of the year by 32%, Facebook - by 35%. True, all this growth may end there, at least, the news about the successful development of vaccines that inspires hope for a return to normal life can easily bring down the quotations of tech giants.
Tesla became the most expensive automaker
Tesla clearly deserved its own block in this material, if only because in November its capitalization exceeded $ 500 billion. Thanks to this, its founder, Elon Musk, burst into the top ratings of the richest people on the planet and strengthened there in the top three. Interestingly, a little earlier Tesla overtook Toyota in capitalization and thus became the most expensive automaker in the world. This means that investors firmly believe in electric vehicles and in Tesla itself, as one of the most advanced companies in this area.
This year, Elon Musk's company planned to produce 500 thousand cars. Whether she succeeded in this, we will find out a little later, after the publication of the reporting for the fourth quarter, but according to estimates, it is very close to this indicator. The volume of deliveries of electric cars with the letter "T" on the hood this year has really grown significantly, which was helped by the expansion of production in China, and at other factories of the company. And she does not plan to stop there - now a large plant is being built in Germany, which, after solving problems with eco-activists, will have to provide Europe with Tesla electric vehicles.
Along the way, the company is developing energy storage technologies - in the second half of 2020, innovative batteries created by Panasonic were presented, which will be used in future Tesla electric cars. True, the growth in production rates increased the number of defects and shortcomings, and also led to the appearance of strange engineering solutions. Nevertheless, consumers love Tesla and are snapping up all the electric cars it produces.
However, Tesla should not relax. Competitors are beginning to breathe down her back. This year, Chinese manufacturers of electric vehicles were able to spread their wings, primarily NIO, which offers an interesting technology of batteries replaceable on robotic stations and has already managed to overtake BMW in capitalization. In addition, traditional auto giants are beginning to wake up little by little, declaring their ambitions in a promising market.
Bitcoin is growing by leaps and bounds
Technological stocks weren't the only ones that grew phenomenally over the past year. The main cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, has also added in price several times. If at the very beginning of last year one bitcoin cost about $ 7,500, and in March, against the background of coronavirus shocks, it sank even below $ 5,000, then, starting in the second half of the year, the cryptocurrency rushed to new heights. At the moment, the record for the cost of bitcoin is already $ 29,292.
And it looks like in the near future the bitcoin rate, and with it, many other cryptocurrencies, is not going to stop. Analysts predict the rise of the first cryptocurrency up to 40-50 thousand dollars, and the most optimistic experts do believe in the rate of about 100 thousand dollars for one bitcoin. Still, cryptocurrencies are quite an interesting investment, and many are attracted by the lack of government regulation, so many see it as a safe haven for their finances. In addition, the scope of Bitcoin is gradually expanding, and last year, for example, its support was introduced by the largest payment system PayPal.
However, soon everything may change. The higher the price, the more attention of regulators bitcoin attracts to itself. Therefore, it should not be surprising that there are reports of the first attempts to strictly control the cryptocurrency market, for example, in the United States. And in Russia from January 1, the corresponding law begins to operate, and it is even assumed that the owners of the cryptocurrency will have to declare their savings and pay taxes. Along the way, states are trying to launch their own digital currencies into circulation. Here, China has achieved the greatest success, but it is obvious that other countries will follow the same path. For example, Russia is also thinking of introducing digital rubles.
Sberbank has turned into a technology company with big ambitions
This year, Sberbank has suddenly turned from a purely financial institution with obvious Soviet traditions into a newfangled technology company Sber, which is now creating its own digital ecosystem. Previously, the company tried to build cooperation with Yandex, but this year it finally decided to go its own way. As a result of the divorce, she lost her share in Yandex. Market marketplace, but instead received the Yandex. Money payment system, which immediately turned into YuMoney.
Sberbank already offers a lot of electronic services for ordinary users and businesses, and the movement in this direction will continue. In particular, the company will develop a voice assistant "Salute", producing smart devices with them - such as smart display SberPortal and TV transmitter SberBox. There is also a music service "SberZvuk" Okko video service, a cloud "SberDisk" gaming service strimingovy SberPlay, and so on. However, one cannot fail to mention that some of Sber's modern services are tied to a joint venture with Mail.ru Group, in which the relationship between partners is also not the easiest.
Most recently, unmanned Sber cars were seen on the roads of Moscow, so the company is moving in this direction as well. It turns out that Sber already has an autopilot system for cars, and now it is being tested in real conditions. They work at Sberbank and on robotics.
The divorce from Yandex prompted Sberbank to start developing its own marketplace, with which it plans to become one of the largest players in Russian online sales. The company will also create its own super-application and will cooperate with retail. In other words, one gets the impression that Sberbank has decided to become the second Yandex. Let's see what happens.
Telegram was unblocked in Russia, and blockchain platform TON was blocked in the USA
2020 has not been without high-profile news related to Telegram. In June, Roskomnadzor decided to unblock the popular messenger in Russia. Attempts to block its work have been unsuccessfully undertaken since April 2018, but, in fact, it continued to function, and the user base only grew - by the summer of 2020, the number of users from Russia reached 30 million. messenger your channel.
But the American regulators won the war against Telegram. They forced Pavel Durov to abandon the Telegram Open Network (TON) blockchain platform, as well as the release of the GRAM cryptocurrency. Three years ago, Durov promised a revolutionary blockchain that would revolutionize people's perceptions of payments and build a decentralized internet. Now, by a court decision, this cryptocurrency cannot be distributed even outside the United States. As a result, Telegram was ordered to return the money collected on TON to investors, and this is by no means a small amount - $ 1.7 billion.
Therefore, the message that monetization will appear in Telegram in 2021 did not surprise anyone. The company has planned to introduce additional paid features for the business, such as offering its own advertising platform. Fortunately, ads will not appear in private chats, they will only be distributed in public channels, where they are still available. But now channel owners will be able to work not through affiliate programs, but directly through Telegram tools. Also promised paid stickers with royalties to their creators.
States against Google, Facebook, Amazon and other tech giants
In the second half of the year, the United States, as well as the European Union, decided to deal with large tech companies. Antitrust lawsuits and various claims of regulators fell like a horn of plenty. And this is natural because it became clear that large corporations have gained tremendous influence on people's lives both through finance and through the information services they provide. Naturally, the states did not like this, and therefore they decided to remind Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Alibaba, and others that great responsibility comes with great force. And it must be carried in such a way that it does not run counter to state policy.
As a result, the European Union initiated a number of antitrust investigations against Google and Amazon, and also developed new laws that should force companies to play according to understandable and common rules for everyone, and this is especially true of technology giants, whose ecosystems act as entry points for a large number of users.
In the US, in the summer, leaders of large IT companies were summoned to Congress to receive a report on their activities. In addition, the US authorities have initiated a series of antitrust lawsuits against Facebook and Google, and as a result, the companies are even threatened with separation. Facebook can be obliged to sell Instagram and WhatsApp, while Google can be deprived of almost the most valuable asset - Chrome! Finally, the Chinese antitrust authorities decided to regulate Alibaba and its fintech arm, the Ant Group.
5 G networks cover the world, but not Russia
5G cellular networks have been evolving for a long time, and this year they finally stopped being something ephemeral and got pretty decent distribution. Globally, the number of 5G network users doubled in the second quarter of 2020 alone. There are no statistics for the end of the year yet, but surely their number has grown significantly after.
In 2020, there are many more fifth-generation cellular networks around the world. China is leading in the introduction of new technology, but other regions are actively building 5G infrastructure. Next-generation cellular networks are being commercialized in the United States, Europe, Korea and other countries.
But Russia is not on this list. In our country, the spread of 5G has faced a powerful obstacle - law enforcement agencies. Frequencies of the 3.4-3.8 GHz range, which are considered the most promising for the development of large-scale 5G networks, they hold behind and are clearly not going to share. Therefore, so far in Russia for 5G, operators have been allocated frequencies in the range of 4.7-4.9 GHz, and they also plan to allocate 24.25-27.5 GHz. The trouble is that these ranges are good for creating local networks, but they are very poor for covering large areas. The second problem: for the construction of 5G networks, operators were obliged to use domestic equipment, which simply does not yet exist.
Nevertheless, sales of smartphones with 5G support have skyrocketed several times over the past year, including in Russia. Now such devices are in the assortment of any manufacturer, and these are not only flagship devices - a lot of very affordable smartphones with support for fifth-generation networks have appeared on the market. And of course, Apple has made a huge push to increase the number of 5G users with the release of the iPhone 12 series of smartphones with 5G support.
NVIDIA decided to buy ARM, AMD - Xilinx, and Google was allowed to buy Fitbit
2020 turned out to be not so rich in mergers and acquisitions, but this does not mean that they do not deserve mention. Moreover, two deals were concluded, which in the future may have a fundamental impact on the hardware market. First of all, we should mention here the purchase of ARM by NVIDIA for $ 40 billion. NVIDIA needs this deal in order to add CPUs to its portfolio, which will allow it to expand its influence on the server market, with a further focus on other segments. Such an acquisition now appears to be an extremely forward-looking investment, especially as Apple, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have shown their interest in the release of ARM chips for PCs and servers. It is curious that in words NVIDIA does not plan to get into the field of chips for smartphones, but promises to continue licensing ARM architectures to third-party companies. That is as if nothing would change for the smartphone market. This could be part of a tricky game, however, as NVIDIA has yet to defend the deal with antitrust authorities in many countries amid serious industry concerns.
Another major deal was AMD's acquisition of Xilinx for $ 35 billion in shares. The first is a developer of programmable logic integrated circuits (FPGA or FPGA). FPGAs are used in the development of various hardware solutions, but more importantly, in recent years, they have been increasingly introduced into servers for specialized computing, because they can be easily configured for specific tasks, and if the task changes, then instantly reprogram the computing circuit. FPGA-based accelerators are becoming more popular, and therefore the purchase of Xilinx should strengthen AMD's position in the server market, for which AMD now has a full range of accelerators, including CPU and GPU.
Finally, at the end of the year, after much litigation and investigation, the European Union allowed Google to take over Fitbit, one of the largest manufacturers of wearable electronics, on the condition that the search giant does not use user health data for targeted advertising. The deal is worth $ 2.1 billion. Thus, pretty soon we will probably see wearable devices under the Google brand.
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