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Intel Nova Lake leak points to Core Ultra Series 400 branding, staggered release next year — hotly anticipated flagship 52-core desktop CPU might not arrive until late 2027

The Hot Take: Long wait for the next build I guess.... LOVIN' the Antec Flux Nocua edition until then I guess.

Intel was expected to unveil its next-generation desktop processors later this year. The upcoming Nova Lake lineup has been making the rounds online, and a new report from VideoCardz suggests that Intel could introduce it under the Core Ultra Series 400 branding. For context, the current Arrow Lake and Arrow Lake Refresh desktop CPUs follow the Core Ultra Series 200 naming scheme, while Intel's latest Panther Lake mobile processors carry the Core Ultra Series 300 branding.Go deeper with TH Premium: CPU(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)CPU scaling…

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Intel becomes the first company to ship high-volume logic chips made with ASML's High NA EUV — select Panther Lake layers on 18A are now dual-qualified for 0.55 NA scanners

The Hot Take: ASML's monopoly needs get challenged, but not sure if Quantum will just make them invalid. We'll have to wait and see I guess.

Intel has entered high-volume manufacturing using ASML's High NA extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography technology for a subset of its Intel Core Ultra Series 3 "Panther Lake" processors, becoming the first company to ship high-volume logic products manufactured with the technology. ASML announced the milestone in an official press release on Wednesday, July 15, confirming that Intel Foundry is running the qualified High NA layers on its Intel 18A process node in Oregon.Go deeper with TH Premium: Chipmaking(Image credit: tsmc)A deeper look at…

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Apple Reportedly Agreed to Intel Chips To Avoid White House Tariffs

The Hot Take: Makes sense, especially if China takes Taiwan....

According to the Wall Street Journal (paywalled), Apple agreed to use Intel's U.S. chipmaking plants after White House officials pressured Tim Cook during tariff-relief talks last summer. MacRumors reports: In August 2025, Apple CEO Tim Cook was in Washington to lobby the Trump administration to drop its proposed 100 percent tariff on semiconductor imports -- a levy that would have raised costs across Apple's product line. Apple reportedly secured an exemption after pledging to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in the U.S., although many…

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Unannounced Nvidia RTX 50 Super GPUs appear in Seasonic PSU calculator — unreleased graphics cards shown with 10-17% higher TGP over original models

The Hot Take: We'll have to see, they just keep milking Ai at the cost of liquidating a whole other industry.

The GeForce RTX 50-series desktop graphics lineup has remained unchanged for just over a year now (since the introduction of the RTX 5050), and none of the conversations we've had at major trade shows suggests that a mid-cycle Super refresh will occur any time soon. But there are still signs that such an update could still happen at some point, and the latest sign comes from Seasonic, which has listed an RTX 5080 Super, an RTX 5070 Ti Super, and RTX 5070 Ti Super in its PSU wattage calculator. Go deeper with TH Premium: GPUs(Image credit:…

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Intel Nova Lake CPUs To Bring Back AVX-512 Support Six Years After The Chipmaker Abandoned It On Client Platforms

The Hot Take: Was almost like they were purposefully crippling their processors under past management.

Intel Nova Lake CPUs will mark the return of AVX-512, a feature that has long been abandoned by the company for its client CPUs. AVX-512 Is Coming Back To Intel's Consumer CPUs, Starting With Nova Lake Intel has had a love-hate relationship with AVX-512 on its consumer CPUs. The AVX-512 instruction set was last seen on Intel's Tiger Lake (11th Gen) family, and since then, the company has offered no support for it on its modern-day chips. Meanwhile, AMD has been offering AVX-512 support on its Zen 4 and Zen 5 chips, both client and server…

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Intel’s XBM Memory Takes Aim At HBM4, Promising 32 GT/s Speeds And Lower Costs Through UCIe Links

The Hot Take: Competition is GOOD.

Intel has published a new patent on its XBM memory, which is proposed as a replacement for HBM4, offering much higher bandwidth capabilities. XBM vs HBM: Intel's New Proposed DRAM Solution Extends To 32 GT/s Speeds, While Reducing Costs Through UCIe Links HBM continues to be the standard for AI accelerators, but more recently, we have seen LPDDR memory being used to overcome shortages, prices, and power associated with the standard. Intel's past attempts at DRAM, such as HMC (Hybrid Memory Cube) and MCDRAM, faced various issues and never came…

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Jim Keller's startup is building a factory to mass-produce small semiconductor fabs —Atomic Semi rebrands as 'Fab2' underlining intended role as a 'fab fab'

The Hot Take: New Micro-FAB? Jim Keller involvement, interesting.

Atomic Semi, the semiconductor tooling startup founded by chip architect Jim Keller and DIY fabrication pioneer Sam Zeloof, has rebranded as Fab2 and moved its operations to Texas, according to the company's new site at fab2.com. The rebrand recasts the company around the idea they're calling a "fab fab," a factory that mass-produces small semiconductor fabs and the tools inside them.Fab2 designs and builds every tool in its fabs in-house, from pumps, valves, and gas lines to lithography and the vacuum chambers that house it. The company…

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Noctua Confirms NL-LC1 Chromax.Black AIO Series; Should Arrive By The End Of This Year

The Hot Take: Yes! No new case possibly.

The company confirmed it in an unusual way, but it seems legit, and as per the announcement, the coolers should arrive soon. Noctua Announces NL-LC1 Chromax.Black AIO Series Despite Exclusion From the Roadmap; The New Variant is Expected to Arrive This Year The Noctua's latest and first-ever AIO cooler series was dropped two weeks ago. The NL-LC1 is what Noctua aims for, superior cooling, which is available in various form factors. Whether you want to cool a mid-range or a high-end CPU, it offers the AIO in various sizes, including 240mm,…

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