Chipset and hardware
News related to Chipset and hardware.
Bolt Graphics powers on its first Zeus GPU
Bolt Graphics has been working on its simulation-centric Zeus GPU for a while now and has reached a significant milestone: a successful test run.
ASRock B860 Challenger Wifi Motherboard Review: Entry-level ATX at a great price, with drawbacks
Based on the mainstream B860 chipset, the ASRock B860 Challenger Wifi sits on the budget side of Intel's motherboard lineup, and costs a reasonable $149.99 . You get a full-sized motherboard with full support for Intel’s Core Ultra and Core Ultra Series 2 (Arrow Lake and Arrow Lake refresh) processors. Still, some sacrifices in specs and features are inevitable at this price point. The all-black B860 Challenger…
This week in Tom's Hardware Premium: October 31, 2026 — Vera CPUs available on Oracle clusters, building an agentic CPU benchmark and a primer to LLMs
In case you're not yet subscribed to our Tom's Hardware Premium subscription service, here's what you've been missing out on this week. We detail our thoughts on Anthropic's filings pre-IPO, Cadence's new suite of LLMs to power its EDA tools, how Nvidia is securing its entire supply chain to serve AI data center demand, how Vera CPUs are landing in the cloud, an update to the ongoing TP-Link saga, and more…
Intel shifts production capacity from consumer to server CPUs in face of 'unprecedented' AI demand — company navigating 'one of the most significant supply shortages in history'
Although the consumer PC market is shrinking and will continue to shrink in the coming quarters, Intel is confident that the overwhelming demand from the AI industry for everything that can compute or store data will offset declines in the client space. To that end, the company is reallocating some of its capacity from client to data center CPUs, expanding its Fab 24 in Ireland to make more Xeons, has begun…
Developer builds a complete Intel 486 PC emulator in a browser — 100% pure-JavaScript Retro486 includes modular tabs for screen, motherboard, storage, expansion cards, and more
Developer Jan de Jager has created a full Intel 486 PC system in a browser. On the e486-web GitHub page , de Jager boasts that the emulator is coded in 100% pure JavaScript. The project’s fuller title is the Retro486 Modular Browser PC . Claude gets a development credit, so we guess you could say e486-web was (partially) vibe-coded . The live demo you can boot with a single click is impressive, with tabs to interact…
Nvidia weighs playing the cosigner for Nscale’s AI data center in West Virginia
When investors get nervous about AI spending, it helps to have the chipmaker that sells the chips offer to cosign the loan.
PS5 Dynamic Pricing Concerns Revived by New Sony Job Listing
Company looking for someone to lead initiative. A new PlayStation job listing has sparked a fresh wave of fan concerns regarding dynamic pricing on the PS Store . Spotted by The Game Post , the role – for a Senior Director of Digital Games Monetisation – includes some phrases which have spooked gamers, including a reference to “intelligent pricing”. Read the full article on pushsquare.com
Apple confirms iOS 27.3 beta is coming next week with Apple Intelligence in China
Apple today took the unusual step of confirming when its next iOS developer beta is expected to arrive, as part of an announcement detailing the upcoming launch of Apple Intelligence in China. Here are the details. more…
Apple Intelligence is finally coming to China with iOS 27.3
Apple will launch Apple Intelligence in China with iOS 27.3, the company announced on its Chinese newsroom website , as reported by MacRumors . The Apple Intelligence features will be available first in an iOS 27.3 beta that's set to launch on November 4th, with a full iOS 27.3 release scheduled for December. This launch doesn't bring the new Siri AI to China. Instead, Apple is launching several of its earlier Apple…
Intel’s stock crashes, knocking $12B from government’s stake
Intel is being hurt by PC sales as the AI industry gobbles memory and other components causing PC prices to rise.
Intel’s woes wipe out $1 trillion of semiconductor market cap in one day — PC market bloodbath leaves few chip stocks unscathed
Intel's shares plunged 30% on Friday, wiping out nearly $150 billion in market capitalization in a single day, the largest single-day loss in the company's history. The decline followed a disappointing financial outlook, largely driven by an anticipated drop of more than 20% in sales at Intel's client computing group (CCPG), the company's main cash cow. The declines quickly spread across the semiconductor industry…
Q&A: Hey AI, who should I vote for this year?
People are peppering artificial intelligence chatbots everyday with questions, but when it comes to politics and the looming 2026 U.S. midterm elections, what role are AI platforms playing? Could an AI chatbot sway a voter to switch parties or re-examine their political beliefs? MIT researchers have built a new dashboard, called the LLM Election Observatory , to examine, in real-time, how popular AI chatbots are…
Google’s satellite AI server transmits its first response to Earth
Google's AI chip-equipped satellite has generated its first response from space. In a blog post on Friday, Google says it successfully booted up the satellite's Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), allowing the on-board Gemma 4 model to follow through on a prompt to create a haiku about being in space: Blue marble below Data streams in silent grace Starlight feeds my core. ✨ Google says it tried out other space-themed…
Save $350 on the Pixel 11 Pro XL gets in record-low deal
The Google Pixel 11 Pro XL just dropped to a record-low $949 on Amazon, down from its $1,299 recommended retail price. That’s a $350 discount, or 27% off RRP, and it’s a strong time to grab Google’s top big-screen phone for a lot less. See the deal at Amazon This is the flagship Pixel for people who want the full package. The Pixel 11 Pro XL has a 6.8-inch high-resolution OLED display, Google’s new Tensor G6 chip…
Things That Go Beep in the Night: Agentic AI Joins the Search for Extraterrestrial Signals
While science fiction lore tells us that humans will meet extraterrestrial life in the form of little green men, the detail that should raise hairs this Halloween is this: the search for extraterrestrial intelligence took a major leap forward with AI, and it increasingly focuses on AI agents built by humans listening for AI agents built by aliens. Some scientists have suggested that extraterrestrial civilizations…
Big blow for Qualcomm? This upcoming Ultra flagship could skip Snapdragon flagship SoCs
TL;DR Chinese smartphone brand OPPO is reportedly going with the MediaTek Dimensity 9600 Pro chip for the Find X10 Ultra flagship. The Find X9 Ultra launched earlier this year with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 SoC, making this a big shift for OPPO. OPPO’s Find X10 Ultra is expected to include several key camera upgrades, including a 200MP main camera with LOFIC tech. Qualcomm once dominated the premium smartphone…
PsiQuantum turns its photonics know-how into an optical switch for supercharging AI data center GPU networks — 8x8 lab prototype loses less light than rivals, with plans to develop larger devices
PsiQuantum, a quantum computing company, announced in a release earlier this week that it has turned its low-loss silicon photonics into an optical switch for use in AI data centers. Every optical switch typically comes with loss of light: the more light a switch receives, the less reaches the other side, with the amount of light lost measured in decibels. Typical data center optics can tolerate half the light (3…
Intelligence agency misplaced 'a very significant number' of removable drives — storage media have been missing for years, but exact number of lost devices remain unknown
The UK’s Investigatory Powers Commissioner’s Office (IPCO) has flagged “a very significant number” of General Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) storage drives that have been missing for years and have yet to be found. According to The Register , the lost storage media have been known to GCHQ officials for years now, but they’re still unsure about the scope of the problem. "I remain concerned that GCHQ has not yet…
Intel leaker reveals Moon Lake chip as a likely replacement for N-series SoCs — four lower-power-efficiency cores, no performance cores, and a 6W TDP
After Intel let loose its Panther Lake chips earlier in this year, followed by Wildcat Lake in April, the firm has been pretty quiet about upcoming consumer CPUs. Known leaker Jaykihn just let a tiny cat out of the bag, though: the base specs for Moon Lake. The diminutive chip is expected to have four low-power-efficiency (LP-E) cores, and zero performance cores. These are rumors, so have your salt shaker at hand…
Benchmarking Nvidia’s Vera CPU for the data center — standalone Vera tested against Granite Rapids-AP and EPYC Turin
Nvidia’s Vera CPU is an important next step in the company’s years-long spearheading of AI infrastructure buildout. It’s arriving just as the shift to agentic AI workflows has created unprecedented demand for data center CPUs, and it’s designed specifically for this moment, at least according to Nvidia’s marketing bullet points. Although the idea that anyone developed a CPU for a shift in demand that arose just six…
The Signature 27 is Motorola’s last chance to get Android updates right
Credit: Motorola Last month, Motorola announced that the Signature 27 was on its way. Unlike its predecessor, the new ultra-high-end model will be available globally, including in the US. The Signature series represents Motorola’s best, with cutting-edge specs like a Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme SoC and a high-end cooling system. Another major difference is its much more ambitious Android update policy.
You can now easily find and add textbooks in Gemini Notebook
TL;DR Google has added a new “Textbooks” feature to Gemini Notebook. It lets users add textbooks from OpenStax, Open Textbook Library, and S. Chand Publishing as sources. The feature is rolling out to users in the US and India. Google is making Gemini Notebook ( previously called NotebookLM ) even more useful for people looking to use textbooks as reference sources. The company announced “ Expert Intelligence ” last…
Deadly Intel Fab 28 explosion causes two-week shutdown, to cost $600 million and severely disrupt server chip manufacturing for six months — 10nm Xeon shipments stall during largest shortage in memory
The explosion at Intel's Fab 28 near Kiryat Gat, Israel , that happened earlier this month forced Intel to shut down the whole facility for two weeks, and now the company expects that it will cost it approximately $600 million in lost revenue over two quarters. The disruption is expected to affect server processors manufactured using Intel's 10nm-class process technologies and will reduce the company's shipments in…
Intel says it’s selling every affordable laptop chip it can make
During Intel's latest earnings call , CEO Lip-Bu Tan said that demand for its budget-focused Wildcat Lake chips "is outstripping supply." According to CFO David Zinsner, the chips are now sold out. Zinsner said Intel has "seen significant growth in Wildcat Lake. It's coming exactly at the right time because it's cost-optimized and we're seeing a lot of focus in that regard." As shortages of RAM and other components…