Intel Z970 Chipset for Nova Lake May Span Both High-End and Mainstream Markets

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

Read the full article

DDR5 RAM Prices Finally Crack In Japan As 64 GB Kits Dip Below $489 For First Time In Four Months

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. […]Read full article at…

Read the full article

Qualcomm’s Datacenter CPU Rumor Comes Just In Time As Agentic AI Goes In Hyperdrive Mode

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…

Read the full article

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.

Read the full article

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

Read the full article

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: ā€œAt…

Read the full article

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…

Read the full article