Hardware

AMD acquires AI chip startup Taalas to boost inference performance by etching models into silicon

The Hot Take: That sounds alot like an ASIC...

In AMD’s latest bid to upset Nvidia's dominance in AI hardware, the House of Zen has acquired AI chip company Taalas, which bakes model weights directly into silicon in a process that promises to boost inference performance by an order of magnitude or more. The deal, announced at market close on Thursday, appears to be framed in much the same context as Nvidia’s $20 billion licensing deal with Groq last December: make high-performance “premium” inference services prized for AI agents, like code assistants, faster and cheaper to run. AMD didn’t…

AMD waits for Nvidia before joining the GPU mugging

The Hot Take: So when is there going to be a price fixing class action for GPUs?

AMD is reportedly preparing to jack up graphics card prices after waiting for Nvidia to blink first. According to PC Gamer the word comes from industry watcher Harukaze5719 who reckons AMD was holding fire until Nvidia pushed up its own prices. “This was to avoid the risk of declining product competitiveness and market share loss from a hasty price adjustment during a period of demand pressure,” Harukaze5719 wrote on X. AMD has already warned manufacturers about a price rise of “at least 10 per cent” across all products. The increase is…

HP, Asus and Acer reportedly turn to CXMT for laptop memory

The Hot Take: Sorry Micron's exit is just to convenient.

HP, Asus and Acer have begun using limited quantities of DRAM from China's ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) in selected budget notebooks sold outside the US, Nikkei Asia reported, as a global memory shortage pushes PC makers to widen their supplier base.

New Micron lawsuit reignites fight over New York fab - complaint alleges 'forever chemicals' will flow into Oneida River

The Hot Take: Um, so memory gets a law suit over 'forever chemicals' but not the other items? Doesn't that seem a bit odd?

Pushback against Micron's planned manufacturing complex in Clay, New York, which comprises four separate fabs, is once again at the center of an environmental lawsuit. Filed by Neighbors for a Better Micron and Jobs to Move America — the same groups that filed a separate lawsuit against Micron in January — filed a new complaint Friday, claiming that approved wastewater and air permits aren't valid and will allow Micron to leak "forever chemicals" into the Oneida River. Go deeper with TH Premium: Chipmaking(Image credit: tsmc)A deeper look at…

Industry shift

The Hot Take: To me it the Computer industry is moving towards the model they used exactly on Automobiles. PC components are being priced out of consumer acceptable prices. Manufacturers are our pricing add in board manufacturers like MSI, Asus, etc. Leaving system OEMs like Apple, Lenovo, Dell & HP. All which are offering up leasing options, exactly the same way the automobile industry went decades ago when cars became to much to buy out right. I hope we can turn this back around.

RTX Spark’s Driver Paves Way For Unofficial eGPU Support On Snapdragon X2 Elite Laptops, Bringing 200+ FPS In Competitive Shooters Like Overwatch, With the Right GPU

The Hot Take: This is the biggest limitation to ARM SoC's as their GPU's are mid-range. So acceptance from gamers will require ability to get high end GPU for performance.

The Snapdragon X2 Elite might have doubled down on compute performance, but a multitude of tests show that its GPU continues to be one of the weakest links of the SoC. Fortunately, a user shows that the RTX Spark driver has introduced unofficial eGPU support through a USB4 connection, allowing you to experience competitive shooters like Overwatch at upwards of 200FPS. Redditor shares “simple to follow” instructions on how to bring eGPU support to Snapdragon X2 Elite laptops Notebooks like the ASUS Zenbook A16 offer a solid configuration to…

Qualcomm won’t be a big datacenter player anytime soon

The Hot Take: They just said that iPhone model loss would be off set by datacenter sales. So i guess they'll be hurting for a bit.

Qualcomm has predicted its entry to the datacenter market will yield $15 billion of annual revenue by FY 2029 – huge growth, but also a modest number compared to its more established rivals. The chip design firm dangled the $15 billion figure on Wednesday along with its Q3 results, which included a warning that revenue from its business selling modems to Apple is about to crater. Execs told investors that supply chain constraints mean Qualcomm expects “an acceleration in the step down of Apple product revenues” as its contribution to the next…

Intel hands Atom blueprints to Tan’s mate

The Hot Take: Another company given x86 tech? Will it go the way of VIA, or will they run and enhance it to bring a 4th strong competitor to the x86 ISA market?

Intel is handing Atom chip IP to Rosaic, a startup run by one of Lip-Bu Tan’s old mates, Amarjit Gill. Gill has history with Intel chief executive Lip-Bu Tan, who has spent years as a semiconductor investor as well as an industry operator. According to Reuters, Gill invested with Tan in high-performance chip startup Nuvia and worked with him on RISC-V chip outfit Rivos. Chipzilla’s Atom chips are built for low-power jobs, where they mostly scrap with designs from British chip blueprint outfit Arm. At one point, Chipzilla aimed Atom at…

Intel Nova Lake Desktop APU Rumored With 12 Xe3P Cores and 65W Power Tier

The Hot Take: APU is the cousin of ARM's SoC. Mid-range across the board if you ask me is what I'm seeing the industry shifting to.

Intel is reportedly developing a socketed Nova Lake-S processor with substantially stronger integrated graphics than recent desktop Core products. Information attributed to hardware leaker Jaykihn describes a configuration with twelve Xe3P graphics cores.

Uncle Sam sees the light, offers GlobalFoundries $300M to pursue silicon photonics while taking 1% stake

The Hot Take: AMD past manufacturing arm getting US funds? We will see if they do anything productive to the industry, as it seems they aren't since they were created in my eyes.

The US government has signed a letter of intent to provide GlobalFoundries with $300 million in CHIPS Act funding and, at the same time, receive a one percent stake in the company worth roughly $269 million. The money's supposedly not a tit-for-tat, but an investment designed to spur development of silicon photonics networking technologies that the AI industry needs for datacenters. “With today’s compute supply chain investments, the Trump Administration is accelerating America’s innovation engine,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said in a…