Hardware·
One model per chip: AMD bought Taalas, whose test part hit 17,000 tokens a second
Taalas casts a model's weights into transistors. Its 6nm test chip served Llama 3.1 8B at roughly 17,000 tokens per second, and AMD just bought the company.
Hiro Tanaka
Hardware and silicon reporter. Covers CPUs, GPUs, AI accelerators, panel tech, and the gaming peripherals that ride the same supply chain.
Hardware·
Anthropic is building an in-house chip team to run Claude cheaper
Anthropic confirmed a custom silicon team for Claude. The target looks like inference cost, and OpenAI's Broadcom chip already ran the same play.
Gaming·
€200 more for an Xbox Series X: Microsoft's memory bill lands on European buyers
Microsoft's August 1 increase put the 1TB Series X at €799.99 and £669.99. The cheapest Series S rose 43%, and Microsoft says storage and memory now cost more than 2.5x.
Hardware·
Samsung won more than $200 billion of Broadcom chip work through 2030
Samsung signed an MOU with Broadcom worth more than $200 billion through 2030 across memory, 2nm foundry and advanced packaging. Nvidia locked up SK Hynix the same day.
Hardware·
Google blamed the Pixel 11 price hike on RAM. A gigabyte now costs $12, up from $2.80.
HBM stacks for AI accelerators outbid the DRAM in phones and laptops. Qualcomm, Roku and Google have all repriced, and IDC sees PC prices up 18.3% this year.
Hardware·
AMD's Helios rack packs 72 GPUs and 31TB of memory to take on Nvidia
AMD launched the Instinct MI455X and its Helios rack-scale system, tying 72 GPUs and 31TB of HBM4 into one machine to challenge Nvidia's data-center grip.
Gaming·
Valve's Steam Machine is back after 14 years, and reviewers are split on the price
Valve's Steam Machine is a tiny, silent SteamOS console that starts at $1,049. The hardware impresses, the value doesn't, and here's who should actually buy one.
Hardware·
Nvidia wants to own every chip inside the AI data center
Nvidia already dominates AI GPUs. Now it's pushing to supply the CPU, the network, and the whole rack. Here's who that squeezes and whether buyers benefit.
Gaming·
Bethesda put Fallout 5 in pre-production. The New Vegas remaster is what fans actually wanted
Bethesda confirmed Fallout 5 is in pre-production plus remasters of Fallout 3 and New Vegas, days after Xbox's reset. Here's what's real and what's years off.
Hardware·
Flipper Zero's 700 KB flash wall: the firmware future is now community-driven
Flipper Devices says the Flipper Zero isn't abandoned, but a 700 KB flash limit is pushing firmware work onto the community while its team builds new hardware.
Hardware·
Realta Fusion pulled electricity straight from a fusion plasma. That's a first, not net power.
Realta Fusion says it converted fusion plasma energy directly into electricity on its WHAM device, an apparent industry first. It is not net-energy gain.
Hardware·
China built the world's fastest supercomputer without a single US chip
A Chinese system called LineShine debuted at No. 1 on the TOP500 at ISC'26, running entirely on domestic CPUs co-designed with Huawei. Here's what that means.
Hardware·
South Korea's $576 billion bet on AI chips runs through Samsung and SK Hynix
South Korea announced a roughly $576 billion (W900 trillion) AI-chip push led by Samsung and SK Hynix, targeting HBM, DRAM fabs, and AI data centers.
Hardware·
IBM's 'sub-1nm' chip is a lab milestone, not a product you'll buy soon
IBM showed a 0.7nm 'nanostack' transistor with ~100 billion transistors on a fingernail. It's real research, but the name is marketing and shipping silicon is years out.
Gaming·
Valve's Steam Machine starts at $1,049, not the $750 it planned. The RAM shortage ate the difference.
Valve's living-room console launches at $1,049 to $1,428. Here's what's inside, why the price ballooned, and how SteamOS lets you skip the hardware entirely.
Hardware·
Qualcomm is chasing a $10 billion AI-chip deal. The target is Jim Keller's RISC-V startup.
Qualcomm is in talks to buy Tenstorrent for up to $10 billion, per Reuters and The Information. The bet: a RISC-V challenger to Nvidia, not just phones.
Hardware·
DRAM and storage chips quadrupled in a year. Now Apple says price hikes are unavoidable.
Tim Cook told the WSJ that Apple price rises are unavoidable as an AI-driven memory crunch quadruples DRAM and NAND costs across every consumer device.
Hardware·
Snap's $2,195 Specs are real standalone AR glasses almost no one can afford
Snap shipped Specs, standalone AR glasses that Evan Spiegel calls the next computer. The hardware is real; the $2,195 price is the problem, and the stock fell.
Gaming·
SteamOS 3.8 now runs on the ROG Ally, not just Valve's Steam Deck
SteamOS 3.8 is stable, with a new kernel, Steam Machine support, and official builds for the ROG Ally and other handhelds. The Windows monopoly on handhelds just cracked.
Hardware·
Renault ditched rare-earth magnets in its EVs in 2012. China's export squeeze made that look smart
A Renault explainer on rare-earth-free EV motors hit Hacker News. Here's how electric cars run without the magnets China controls, and who's shipping them.
Gaming·
Xbox is planning major layoffs in July as new CEO Asha Sharma overhauls the unit
Bloomberg's Jason Schreier reports Xbox plans significant job cuts after June 30, as new CEO Asha Sharma tells staff a 3% margin can't continue. Microsoft hasn't confirmed.
Hardware·
GM is spending $900 million on a battery bet that could cut $6,000 off an EV truck
GM is pouring $900M into a new LMR battery plan, betting a cheaper chemistry gets its EVs to price parity with gas trucks by 2028. Here's the play.
Gaming·
Beyond the engine: six open-source tools that shape how games get made
Godot, Unity and Unreal get the headlines, but six open-source tools quietly do the art, levels, and dialogue work that real games ship on.
Hardware·
Nvidia's RTX Spark laptops run 120-billion-parameter models locally, no cloud needed
Nvidia's RTX Spark laptops put a Grace Blackwell superchip and 128GB of unified memory in a notebook, aimed at running 120B-parameter models offline.
Gaming·
116,000 Minecraft PCs got infected by fake mods. The 'WeedHack' stealer is free to anyone.
McAfee says a free malware-as-a-service stealer called WeedHack has hit 116,000+ Minecraft systems via fake mods and cheats. Here's what it grabs and how to clean up.
Hardware·
Blue Origin lost a fully fueled New Glenn in a pad fireball a week before its Amazon launch
A static fire test destroyed a fully fueled New Glenn at Cape Canaveral on May 28. Nobody was hurt, but the launch manifest just slipped.
Hardware·
Oura shrank the Ring 5 by 40% and raised the price $50 to $399
Oura's Ring 5 is 40% smaller than the Ring 4, adds live workout tracking and an AI Advisor, and costs $50 more. Here's what's new and whether it's worth it.
Hardware·
AMD walled off Linux Vivado behind a paid tier. The free FPGA tier is now Windows only.
Vivado 2026.1 introduces a five-tier licensing model. The free BASIC tier supports Windows only; Linux requires the paid CORE tier. FPGA hobbyists are pushing back.
Hardware·
Japan's NICT shrank picosecond time sync into a phone-sized box. They call it Wi-Wi.
NICT's Wi-Wi prototype hit 30 ns time sync with 20 ps jitter at 900 MHz. It isn't Wi-Fi. Jeff Geerling found a working demo at the NAB show.
Gaming·
Destiny 3 isn't in production. Bungie is heading for significant layoffs after Destiny 2 wraps in June.
Bloomberg's Jason Schreier reports Bungie has no follow-up project for the Destiny 2 team. Sony is taking tighter management control and Marathon hasn't recovered.
Hardware·
Alibaba's new Zhenwu M890 chip is 3x faster and aimed straight at agent workloads
Alibaba showed the Zhenwu M890 at its Cloud Summit on May 19. 144 GB of memory, 800 GB/s interchip bandwidth, and Qwen3.7-Max riding on top.
Hardware·
Google and Samsung set Fall 2026 for Android XR glasses. Gentle Monster and Warby Parker are doing the frames.
The Android Show confirmed Fall 2026 for Google and Samsung's first AR glasses, plus three new features for the Galaxy XR headset that launched in October.
Gaming·
Sony killed its PC port pipeline. Ghost of Yotei, Saros, and Marvel's Wolverine stay on PlayStation.
PlayStation Studios CEO Hermen Hulst told staff on May 18 that single-player first-party games will stay console-exclusive. Multiplayer titles keep multi-platform.
Hardware·
Cisco cut 4,000 jobs on its record revenue day. AI infrastructure orders jumped to $9 billion.
Cisco posted $15.8B in Q3 FY26 revenue on May 14, up 12% YoY, then sent layoff notices to 4,000 staff the same day. AI orders are now tracking to $9B for the fiscal year.
Hardware·
Cerebras priced its IPO at $185 and closed at $311. Andrew Feldman and Sean Lie became billionaires.
Cerebras raised $5.55 billion on May 14 and closed its first day at a $95 billion market cap. The wafer-scale AI chip maker shipped the year's biggest tech IPO.
Hardware·
The OrcaSlicer fork Bambu Lab killed has six mirrors. Jeff Geerling joined the boycott.
FULU-Foundation/OrcaSlicer-bambulab hit 1,700 stars on May 12. Geerling won't recommend a Bambu printer again, and Louis Rossmann pledged $10,000 toward Jarczak's defense.
Gaming·
Nintendo hiked the Switch 2 by $50. AI data center demand for memory chips drove it.
Nintendo confirmed a $50 Switch 2 price increase effective September 1 in the US, citing market conditions. The DRAM shortage caused by AI buildouts is the trigger.
Gaming·
Valve open-sourced the Steam Controller's shell. Dbrand had a skin ready in 48 hours.
Valve published STP and STL CAD files for the Steam Controller and Puck under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 on GitLab. Anyone with a 3D printer can now mod it.
Hardware·
SpaceX filed for a $55B Texas chip fab. Total Terafab spend could hit $119 billion.
SpaceX filed plans for a $55B Terafab semiconductor facility in Grimes County, Texas. Total spend could reach $119 billion across phases.
Hardware·
AMD's data center revenue jumped 57% to $5.8 billion in Q1. Its stock closed up 18%.
AMD reported Q1 revenue of $10.25B, up 38% YoY. Data center hit $5.8B (+57%) and Q2 guidance midpoint of $11.2B beat consensus by roughly $700M.
Hardware·
Texas Instruments shipped the TI-84 Evo. $160, USB-C, 3x faster, still exam-approved.
TI's first big redesign of the TI-84 in over a decade ships April 28 with a 156 MHz Cortex chip, a 50% larger graphing area, and Python on board. Exam boards still approve it.
Hardware·
'Physical buttons are better': Mercedes is retrofitting its steering wheels across the lineup.
Mercedes software chief Magnus Östberg confirms physical buttons return on the new GLC and CLA, citing software-defined vehicle telemetry from CLA drivers.
Gaming·
Denuvo's single-player DRM is fully cracked. 2K is forcing 14-day online check-ins to fight back.
Pirate trackers hit zero uncracked Denuvo titles for the first time in 12 years. 2K's response: a token that expires every fortnight and locks you out offline.
Hardware·
AMD's 'Gorgon Halo' refresh leaks with 192GB memory. Strix Halo tops out at 128GB.
A leaked Geekbench listing puts AMD's Ryzen AI Max+ 495 on a 192GB platform with a Radeon 8065S iGPU. The Strix Halo chip it replaces capped at 128GB.
Gaming·
Panic banned generative-AI art and audio from the Playdate Catalog. Code assistance still gets a pass.
The Playdate Catalog will no longer accept titles that use ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion, or Suno output for art, audio, text, or dialog. Existing titles get a label.
Hardware·
Bambu Lab killed an OrcaSlicer fork by lawyer letter. The fork was based on Bambu's own AGPL code.
Pawel Jarczak pulled OrcaSlicer-bambulab off GitHub on May 1 after Bambu Lab's legal team accused him of impersonating Bambu Studio and bypassing authorization.
Hardware·
Samsung Q1 profit hit 57.2 trillion won. Memory chips for Nvidia drove 93% of it.
Samsung Electronics posted record Q1 2026 results on April 30: 133.9 trillion won revenue and 57.2 trillion won operating profit. Semiconductors did 93% of the work.
Hardware·
AMD Zen 7 'Florence' leak: 288 cores, a separate cache die, and a 25% IPC swing
Leaked slides describe Zen 7 EPYC scaling to 288 cores per socket, with all L3 moved off the CCD onto a stacked cache die. Tape-out is October 2026, launch late 2028.
Hardware·
Anker built its own AI chip. It runs neural nets inside flash memory cells.
Anker's Thus chip embeds compute inside NOR flash, claims 150x more on-device AI for noise cancellation, and ships in Soundcore earbuds on May 21. Here's why it matters.
Gaming·
$99 Steam Controller leak: a YouTuber broke embargo and Reddit thinks it's too much
Tech YouTuber Techy Talk pulled an early Steam Controller review minutes after posting. The leaked $99 price, gyro, and magnetic TMR sticks have already split fans.
Hardware·
Cerebras files for an IPO again, this time with $510M in revenue and a $10B OpenAI deal in its pocket
Cerebras filed an S-1 on April 17 listing as 'CBRS,' targeting roughly $23B at the prior private mark. The OpenAI inference deal is the line item that changed the story.
Hardware·
Artemis II beamed 4K video from the Moon over a laser. The backup station was a $5M Australian kit.
NASA's Orion O2O terminal hit 260 Mbps from lunar orbit to White Sands, Table Mountain, and a sub-$5M Australian station. Crewed lasercom cleared its first real test.
Hardware·
Intel's foundry finally has a whale: Musk says Tesla's Terafab will run on 14A
Elon Musk said Tesla plans to manufacture at Terafab in Austin on Intel's 14A process. It's the first major external customer Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan needs to keep the foundry alive.
Hardware·
Google splits its AI chip: the TPU 8t trains, the TPU 8i serves, and Axion handles the rest
At Cloud Next 2026, Google unveiled TPU 8t and TPU 8i, an 8th-generation split that matches Nvidia on agentic inference. Ironwood hit GA the same day.
Hardware·
Framework's Laptop 13 Pro is a ground-up redesign: aluminum, 20-hour battery, $1,199 DIY
Framework opened pre-orders for the Laptop 13 Pro on April 21. Panther Lake or Ryzen AI 300, LPCAMM2, a 74Wh battery, and Framework's first touch display.
Hardware·
Why your next RAM kit costs double: the AI memory crunch, explained
DDR5 contract prices jumped 100% since 2025, HBM is eating 23% of DRAM wafers, and the fabs that could fix it don't come online until 2028. Here's the shape of the crunch.
Hardware·
Amazon is done with Android on Fire TV. Vega OS is the only future.
Amazon's new Fire TV Stick HD ships with Vega OS, no sideloading allowed. Sources say every future Fire TV will follow. Here's what changes for users and devs.
Hardware·
A $5,000 open-source radar that sees 20 km, built by one engineer in Morocco
Nawfal Motii's Aeris-10 phased-array radar beats $250,000 commercial systems at 3% of the cost. Hardware, firmware, and FPGA bitstream are all on GitHub.
Hardware·
Meta just committed 1 gigawatt of custom AI chips with Broadcom through 2029
Meta and Broadcom expanded their partnership to co-develop four generations of MTIA chips on a 2nm process. Here's what the deal includes and why Nvidia should care.