The Hot Take: It appears they definitely woke a sleeping giant....
Intel's next-gen Xeon "Diamond Rapids" CPUs will offer up to 512 cores, while Coral Rapids will bring back SMT on 8-channel platforms in 2028. Intel Diamond Rapids 16-Channel Slips Into 2027, Features Up To 512 Cores Intel Diamond Rapids "Xeon" CPUs were going to launch this year, but delays in plans have pushed it to 2027. The delay can be attributed to several reasons, such as yields and the fact that the 8-channel line was cancelled. Now, Intel plans to launch Diamond Rapids "Xeon" CPUs in 2027. As per Jaykihn, Intel's mid-2027 plans for Diamond Rapids include a volume launch [ā¦]Read full article at https://wccftech.com/intel-diamond-rapids-xeon-2027-512-cores-16-channel-memory-coral-rapids-smt-in-2028/
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The Hot Take: This is just a very inserting move as it cannibalizes the range of SKUs for the lower end builds. Question is will they be charging same for the chipset but tweaking the firmware for USB ports, SATA and PCIe lane configurations for lower priced boards? Only time will tell. This does bring us back to the days where they didn't have several chipsets and board manufacturers has a bit more control of their boards features.
According to the latest leaks, Intel's next-gen Nova Lake desktop CPUs will see a bit of a shake-up in their motherboard chipset market segmentation strategy. The usual source for Intel leaks, Jaykihn, says that the next-gen Z970 chipset will "replace most of the market currently covered by the B860." However, a B960 chipset is still on the
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The Hot Take: Not hitting the states yet, everything still 800+ still. Hopefully soon, or they start pumping out CUDIMMs for the higher speed kits.
You will be extremely lucky if you can buy a 64 GB RAM kit for under $500 these days, but some retailers in Japan are indeed selling it for such a low price. Several DDR5 RAM Kits in Japan See a Sudden Price Decline of Up To 22% Compared to Previous Months Prices for several DDR5 RAM kits have dropped sharply in Japan mid-April, making them more affordable than they were in the previous months. We all have been waiting for such price drops, but every time we see some relief, the prices shoot up quickly in a few days. [ā¦]Read full article at https://wccftech.com/ddr5-ram-prices-finally-crack-in-japan-as-64-gb-kits-dip-below-489-for-first-time-in-four-months/
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The Hot Take: I plenty of folks that will be happy about this. Slowly becoming Linux more every day.
Microsoft is rolling out Windows Update improvements that give users more control over how updates are installed whileĀ reducing disruption from frequent or poorly timed restarts. [...]
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The Hot Take: Everyone is joining the ARM SoC Server party! To sad they don't know that Fujitsu has already been ruling that with a Top 500 server running them. Better late than not paid I guess?
Qualcomm is rumored to be preparing a brand new datacenter CPU, which will be just in time to power growing Agentic AI needs. Rumors that Qualcomm's New Datacenter CPU is just a few months away may not sound crazy, given the demand there is for agentic AI There's a rumor going around that Qualcomm is working on its very own "dedicated" Datacenter CPU based on the Arm architecture. Qualcomm making its own Datacenter CPU at some point was expected, but what the new rumor is suggesting is that we could see that chip being announced as early as June this [ā¦]Read full article at https://wccftech.com/qualcomm-datacenter-cpu-launch-in-june-as-agentic-ai-goes-in-hyperdrive-mode/
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The Hot Take: Great news as we need healthy competition for x86 in a world being crowded by ARM SoC chips. We'll see soon which architecture wins out but we still have RISC-V around the corner, where intel is a board member of that ISA. I feel this limiting ram on devices might be to push in ARM/RISC into acceptance...
Demand for Intel's products exceed expectations and supply, but Intel is still bleeding money.
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The Hot Take: HBM competitor would be good bringing Ai accelerator competition for RAM. Intel bringing it should help Intel to catch up in the Ai game for sure.
Japanās SaiMemory, a SoftBank subsidiary collaborating with Intel, has secured NEDO funding to develop Z-Angle Memory (ZAM), a next-gen DRAM architecture addressing HBM limitations
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The Hot Take: When do we start spinning up class action on this price rigging game?
SSD prices are already daft, and Samsung and Kingston have decided that now is the perfect time to whack them up by about 10 per cent.
Those Micro Centre shelves stacked with high-end drives costing thousands of dollars are heading for even sillier price tags, and budget gaming PC builds are getting mugged.
Samsung has sent out a price adjustment notice for SSD products, with increases said to exceed 10 per cent.
It has told three major domestic distributors that its cost prices have formally risen.
IT Home Source Bobantang wrote: āAt the same time, Kingston announced yesterday that all SSD products across its lineup will implement a unified price increase starting this week, with adjustments of no less than 10 per cent.ā
It said that supply chain chatter indicates Samsung and Kingston have issued official notices covering their whole SSD line-ups.
The expectation is at least a 10 per cent bump, which is a polite way of saying your next upgrade is going to sting.
That puts drives like the Samsung 990 PRO 1 TB, already priced at $300 to $330, on track to hit nearly $330 to $360.
A 1 TB 990 Pro used to sit for less than $100 last year, and now it is pushing three to four times that, like nothing happened.
This is being pitched as the second quiet price nudge this month, with Samsung and Western Digital previously hiking high-end M.2 SSD pricing hard.
Prices jumped fast worldwide, and some 8 TB models are reportedly selling for more than $4,000.
The story being whispered is NAND flash supply constraints, because retail demand alone does not usually pull this sort of stunt.
That would explain why every refresh feels like someone is charging rent on your PCIe lanes.
The knock-on effect is ugly for gamers, who do not want to settle for sub-1 TB of storage, even if they are willing to skimp on RAM.
OEMs are already leaning on higher SSD and RAM costs to bump system pricing, with LGās Gram laptops getting hit by as much as $400.
AI infrastructure demand keeps warping the storage market, with vendors chasing server orders instead of shoppers trying to build a decent rig without selling a kidney.
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The Hot Take: I find this to be VERY good news.
The chip maker reported a 7 percent rise to $13.6 billion in its latest quarter, more than $1 billion more than Wall Street expected.
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By ckasprzak | TkOut
| April 23, 2026 |
Hardware
The Hot Take: Cool, I mean if it makes sense I'm all for it.
Shortly after their discovery, carbon nanotubes seemed to be a material wonder. There were metallic and semiconducting forms; they were tiny and incredibly light; and they could only be broken by tearing apart chemical bonds. The ideas for using them seemed endless.
But then the reality of working with them set in. It was hard to get a pure population of metallic or semiconducting forms. Synthesis techniques tended to produce a tangle of mostly short nanotubes; those that extended for more than a couple of centimeters remain rare. And while the metallic version offered little resistance to carrying electric current, it was hard to send many electrons down the nanotube.
Materials scientists, however, are a stubborn bunch, and they're still trying to get them to work. Today's issue of Science includes a paper describing the addition of a chemical to carbon nanotube bundles to boost their ability to carry current to levels closer to those of copper. While the more conductive nanotubes weren't stable, the discovery may point the way toward something with a longer shelf life.Read full article
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