Intel stock jumps 28%, setting a record, after it posts strong Q1 with rising forecasts — Intel says yields are improving faster than expected with new nodes

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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SoftBank subsidiary working with Intel to develop radical new ZAM memory is now receiving Japanese gov't subsidies — new memory designed as a lower-power HBM for AI workloads

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.

Japan’s 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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Samsung and Kingston jack up SSD prices

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: “At 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.” 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 LG’s 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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Carbon nanotube wiring gets closer to competing with copper

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 Comments

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Intel’s Hallock Blames Software, Not Silicon, For Gaming Gap — Claims 30% Performance Is Hiding Behind Poor Optimization

The Hot Take: Again the people out there are calling this cheating. I say if you optimized for your hardware how is it cheating????

While everyone wants faster hardware, Intel says the answer lies in software optimization, and the P and E cores are almost identical in gaming performance. Robert Hallock Says E-Cores Don't Degrade Gaming Performance and PC Enthusiasts are "Underestimating" the Importance of Software Intel might not have been able to deliver X3D-equivalent performance in gaming with its latest Core Ultra 200 series, but it has gotten closer with the Plus variants. While still noticeably behind when it comes to the leading gaming performance, Intel blames this regression more on the "software" optimization than the hardware itself. In an interview with PC […]Read full article at https://wccftech.com/intels-hallock-blames-software-not-silicon-for-gaming-gap-claims-30-performance-is-hiding-behind-poor-optimization/

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Intel’s Z970 Chipset Will Cover Both the Z890 High-End and B860 Mainstream Tiers for Nova Lake

The Hot Take: Interesting move, consolidate down to a single chip set. Less time to develop, they going to do disabling features at the firmware level to get more skus at different price points?

Intel's upcoming Z970 motherboards for Nova Lake-S Desktop CPUs will replace both high-end Z890 and mainstream B860 options. Intel Z970 Motherboards To Cover An Extensive Market With Both High-End & Mainstream Options For Nova Lake Builders Intel's 900-series motherboards will have a wide range of options for PC builders. The flagship Z990 chipset will be the recommended choice for enthusiast Nova Lake Desktop CPUs, featuring a dual compute tile configuration, while the Z970 chipset will retain a primary focus on the high-end market. Based on a new post by Jaykihn at X, it looks like the Z970 chipset may not […]Read full article at https://wccftech.com/intel-z970-chipset-cover-both-z890-high-end-b860-mainstream-tiers-for-nova-lake/

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Bolt Graphics Tapes Out Zeus GPU, Targets HPC with Bold RTX 5090 Claims

The Hot Take: We all desperately need this to not be vapor-ware!

A relatively unknown U. S. -based startup, Bolt Graphics, has announced that it has successfully taped out the first test chip of its Zeus GPU architecture. The company positions Zeus as a disruptive compute accelerator, previously claiming performance up to 150% higher than an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 while consumi ...

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Supermicro GPU smuggling prompts Nvidia to intensify supply chain audit

The Hot Take: How far up the supply chain does this go? All the way to Nvidia? Only time will tell.

Following the recent smuggling indictment involving Supermicro co-founder Wally Liaw and others, Nvidia has significantly upgraded its global supply chain monitoring practices in recent months, according to an industry source. Already maintaining high visibility over customer lists, Nvidia now enforces stricter controls on shipments and transshipment processes, prompting multiple suppliers to expand their legal teams to comply with the intensified audits.

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