The Hot Take: Good, USA needs a strong Intel manufacturing.
Intel has overcome one big challenge that will lead to the creation of hyper-large chips beyond 12x reticle size through advanced packaging technologies. Intel Is Creating The World's Most Advanced & Largest Chips in the US at Its New Mexico "Rio Rancho" Facility, Leveraging Next-Gen Packaging Innovations Modern-day chips don't rely on a single piece of silicon, and instead utilize a range of silicon dies, interconnected together using the latest packaging solutions. The terminology used for such designs is chiplets, and chiplets were made…
By ckasprzak | TkOut | August 1, 2026 | Hardware, MSI
The Hot Take: Was only a matter of time. Warranties mean nothing with these shortages and price hikes.
An MSI Raider GE77HX 12UHS sporting an Intel Core i9-12900HX and an RTX 3080 Ti might be considered aged at this point, but the gaming laptop can still hold its own in a truckload of titles, assuming it still works. One Redditor has shared evidence that the company refused to honor a motherboard replacement for the machine, simply because it would have been too expensive for them. Talk about a punch in the gut for the customer who spent $6,000 on a top-tier gaming laptop like this. The Raider GE77HX 12UHS was deemed “Beyond Economical Repair,”…
The Hot Take: As it should be, given all of the other ones are own by foreign entities.
Intel has completed its RAMP-C program, which now aims to enable customers to move from test chips to domestic high-volume manufacturing. Intel RAMP-C Leads To Successful Development of a Strong "Design Enablement Infrastructure" Which Enables Commercial & Defense Customers To Design & Fabricate Chips Within the US Press Release: Intel Foundry has completed the Rapid Assured Microelectronics Prototypes - Commercial (RAMP-C) program. Launched in September 2021, the program supported development of domestic, leading-edge CMOS technology…
The Hot Take: Is ARM going to shine or show it's mid-range performance?
The NVIDIA N1X is surely powerful enough for the Windows-on-Arm market, but the current prototype software prevents it from reaching its full potential. User Puts Microsoft's Unreleased NVIDIA N1X-Equipped Surface Laptop Ultra To Test; Discovers Chip Being Held Back by Unfinished Drivers The NVIDIA RTX Spark laptops will debut in the coming weeks, and if you were wondering about their performance numbers, here is an early sneak peek by a TechPowerUp user, who got his hands on an early prototype from Microsoft. The user "Fouquin" says he found…
The Hot Take: Again, Nvidia doing anti-competitive practices?
Nvidia’s graphics card prices are reportedly jumping again as memory costs rise and retailers start clearing shelves in panic.
With Samsung reportedly raising DRAM prices by about 20 per cent for the current quarter, Nvidia appears to have decided customers can pay. The result is another price rise for consumer graphics cards, the third such inflationary episode this year, according to the reports.
This one has reportedly emptied store shelves as distributors shift into full panic mode.
Unlike Nvidia’s May price rise, the latest bout…
The Hot Take: Is Nvidia pricing out AIB manufacturers to take the whole pie of selling their GPUs?
The ongoing component crisis has forced manufacturers to raise product prices around the world, which includes the best GPUs. MSI and PNY have just announced new prices for all RTX 50-series graphics cards for China, representing up to a 59% hike compared to MSRP. While Nvidia GPUs have been the most affected, offerings from Intel and AMD are also experiencing a similar predicament, according to Wccftech. MSI's price list actually shows the old prices (from a week ago) as well as the new ones, giving us an official percentage difference of…
The Hot Take: ASML needs competition, but I wasn't saying from China. LOL
According to The Information (paywalled), a state-backed Shanghai company has begun mass-producing China's first homegrown immersion DUV lithography machines, with about five units expected this year for SMIC, Hua Hong, and CXMT. Roughly 20 more units are expected in 2027. Tom's Hardware reports: The Information didn't name the manufacturer, but its sources described the operation as having pulled DUV development teams from several Chinese companies, one of them the state-backed startup Shanghai Yuliangsheng Technology. SMIC has been testing a…
The Hot Take: Still not buying the ARM SoC's are better than discrete system CPUs. We'll have to see how Intel/AMD ACE instructions far against this.
NVIDIA has started using clusters of its own Vera processors to develop future CPUs, GPUs, and AI accelerators. The company says initial electronic design automation testing shows performance improvements of up to 1.
By ckasprzak | TkOut | July 27, 2026 | Hardware, Intel
The Hot Take: Good to hear, and hope it's true.
Intel is back with unusually strong quarterly figures. In the second quarter of 2026, the company generated revenue of around 16.1 billion US dollars, 25 percent more than in the same period last year. According to Intel, this was the strongest revenue growth in more than 15 years. The data-center processor business in particular benefited […]
The Hot Take: Interesting, we'll see if they get the ext GPU with the SoC internal GPU issues worked out but I'm still thinking Risc-V may do it better.
Windows on Arm systems were long regarded as an interesting alternative to conventional PCs, but they were significantly limited when it came to demanding hardware support. A current test now shows that this situation is gradually changing. A notebook with Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite could be successfully operated with an external NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060, […]