The Hot Take: On the heals of 7.0 looking to be just finalized.
PCI-SIG has released the first public draft of the PCI Express 8.0 specification, outlining the next major evolution of the industry-standard interconnect technology.
Read the full articleThe Hot Take: So legacy is always a ball and chain keeping you from moving forward faster. We'll see how they drop some of the legacy architecture to modernize the OS.
When you right-click a file in Windows 11 or launch a traditional desktop application, you are interacting with code that predates the commercial internet. The Win32 API, introduced all the way back in the Windows 95 era, is still a significant part of the worldâs most popular desktop operating system. But according to Microsoftâs own leadership, this was never the plan. First spotted by Windows Latest, in a recent video posted by the official Microsoft Dev Docs account on X, Mark Russinovich, Microsoftâs Chief Technology Officer of Azure and the legendary creator of Sysinternals, admitted that the survival of Win32 is one of the biggest surprises in the companyâs history. https://www.windowslatest.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Microsoft-statement-on-Win32.mp4 âDid anyone in the 90s expect Win32 to be a first-class API surface in the year 2026? And I think I can safely answer, no,â Russinovich explained. âNobody, I think, would have expected that because we were thinking flying cars and, you know, moon stations by the year 2026, not Win32 that was designed back in Windows 95 days.â Even as everything in the world has changed, it baffles me that computer code, as old as me, is still relevant when nothing around me feels the same as it did just 10 years ago. Disk Management Tool is a Win32 application still relevant in Windows 11 So how did a 30-year-old API outlive decades of internal attempts to replace it? According to Russinovich, it all comes down to the massive ecosystem built on top of it. âI think that one of the reasons itâs got the staying power is itâs just a fundamental layer inside of Windows that so many apps have built on⌠itâs kind of bedrock,â he said. Russinovich pointed to his own Sysinternals tools as proof. Founded in 1996, he noted that he would have âbet a million dollarsâ that his earliest tools wouldnât be relevant in 2026. Instead, they are more relevant than ever. Sysmon, which became an inbuilt feature with the March 2026 update, is actively being integrated directly into Windows, and Zoomit, developed in the early 2000s, remains an incredibly popular utility inside PowerToys today. Microsoft has a graveyard of Win32 replacements Several years ago, when I came to know about Win32, the first thing I was told was how robust it was. So, if Win32 is such a capable bedrock, why has Microsoft spent the last twenty years trying to kill it? Like many of you, I have more Win32 apps on my PC than web apps or apps built in a modern framework. Yes, they are incredibly fast and deeply integrated into the OS hardware, but the fact is, they are notoriously difficult to modernize visually. To keep up with modern user interface expectations, Microsoft desperately needed a new framework. What followed was a decades-long graveyard of abandoned app frameworks. Microsoft tried MFC (a C++ wrapper), followed by WinForms for .NET developers. While these arenât really Win32 replacements, they were abstractions on top of Win32. Then came Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), which was when the actual effort for replacement started and it introduced XAML and hardware-accelerated rendering. WPF was supposed to be the definitive future of Windows apps, until Silverlight briefly took the spotlight as a cross-platform bet, only to be eventually killed off by the rise of HTML5. The most aggressive push to replace Win32 came with Windows 8 and the introduction of WinRT. Microsoft wanted developers to build secure, touch-friendly, full-screen apps. When the Windows 8 UI failed, they redirected to the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) in Windows 10. Back in my Windows 10 Mobile days, the one thing I used to tell everyone about the app situation in Microsoftâs mobile OS was that UWP would enable a powerful unified platform for apps that work across phones, Xbox, and PCs. Well, that didnât age well. Also, UWP was too restrictive, heavily sandboxed, and completely alienated traditional desktop developers who needed deep OS access. As Russinovich noted in his video: âThereâs been various times in Microsoftâs history where we thought weâd reboot the Windows API surface like WinRT that actually didnât play out the way that a lot of people expected it to, given thereâs still the separation between thick client and Win32 and the browser, which is HTML and JavaScript.â Developers still prefer WebView2 for Windows amid the RAM crisis I asked multiple developers why they continue making RAM-hungry web apps for Windows. That, too, was Microsoftâs fault. Because Microsoft kept introducing and subsequently abandoning native frameworks, developers simply lost trust in the Windows platform. I explained this in detail in a Windows Latest report, where a developer told me why Windows 11 keeps getting web apps instead of native apps. WhatsApp web app stuck in the loading screen I was told that building a native Windows app started to feel like a massive liability. And they canât be blamed. Why invest years into a framework that Microsoft might deprecate tomorrow? Funnily enough, it was Microsoft that pivoted to the web. Microsoft introduced WebView2, a developer control that essentially embeds the Chromium-based Microsoft Edge engine directly inside desktop applications. Suddenly, the entire OS was flooded with web apps, including Microsoft Teams, Clipchamp, the new Outlook, OneDrive, the Windows 11 Widgets board, and even the latest version of Copilot is a web app. Copilot in Task Manager While web apps are cheaper to build and much easier to maintain across multiple platforms, they are fundamentally flawed for desktop computing. Embedding a full browser engine into every individual application is a recipe for disaster when it comes to system resources. This love for WebView2 and Electron is the reason Windows 11 has become such a memory hog. I use the WhatsApp desktop app every single day, and it is an absolute disaster. In my testing, WhatsApp consumes an absurd amount of RAM when doing absolutely nothing, entirely because it uses heavy web wrappers instead of the lightweight native code it used to use in the UWP era. Microsoftâs Clipchamp is another web app that I had to use for basic video edits, but I later left it because Microsoftâs built-in video editor now needs OneDrive sync to work! My frustration is compounded when I compare Windows to macOS. While Apple users enjoy highly optimized, native applications like iMovie or the dedicated Pages suite for free, loyal Windows users like me have no choice but to rely on web-based alternatives like Clipchamp that need a constant internet connection, lack deep OS integration, and eat through system memory. Microsoft Clipchamp is a WebView2 powered video editor Fortunately, Appleâs success with a sub $600 budget laptop forced the Redmond giant to rethink their app development priorities. Microsoft is pivoting back to native apps with WinUI 3 Thankfully, the tide is finally turning. Microsoft has realized that making Windows into a glorified Chrome OS is alienating power users and actively destroying system performance. A few months ago, Rudy Huyn, a Partner Architect at Microsoft, confirmed he was hiring a team dedicated specifically to building â100% nativeâ apps for Windows 11. The focus has aggressively shifted toward WinUI 3, the latest native UI framework built under the Windows App SDK umbrella. WinUI 3 is exactly what Microsoft needs to win back developers. It allows them to build gorgeous, modern, Fluent-designed applications that still have full, unrestricted access to the underlying Win32 âbedrock.â Just recently, Microsoft released a massive Windows App SDK 2.0 update, equipping developers with semantic versioning, a refactored Windows ML stack, and much-needed drag-and-drop support for bridging WebView2 content seamlessly into native WinUI 3 shells. Microsoft is retiring legacy Win32 the right way Microsoft is finally eating its own dog food and cleaning up Windows 11. Rather than forcing a hard reboot as they did with WinRT, Microsoft is carefully etching out the oldest, ugliest (some might disagree) Win32 UI elements in Windows 11 and replacing them with highly optimized WinUI 3 native code. We recently discovered that the Windows 95-era File Explorer Properties dialog box is finally getting replaced with a modern WinUI 3 version, complete with full dark mode support. The legacy Run dialog (Win + R) has been completely rewritten into a blazing-fast WinUI 3 application. After using both versions, I can confidently say that the new Run dialog is as good, if not better, than the old Run dialog, especially considering how beautiful it looks. Compiled with .NET AOT, the new Run dialog achieves a staggering 94ms median time-to-show, which is surprisingly faster than the old Run dialog, and it proves that modern WinUI 3 frameworks can absolutely match the raw speed and efficiency of legacy Win32 code. As Microsoft continues to replace heavy WebView2 wrappers with native WinUI 3 components, Windows 11 will inevitably stop consuming so much unnecessary memory. We may not have flying cars or moon stations in 2026, but after decades of missteps, we might finally get a fast, native, and consistent Windows operating system that respects its own legacy. The post Microsoft admits Windows 11 is still built on 90s-era Win32, and no one saw it coming appeared first on Windows Latest
Read the full articleThe Hot Take: Have they given up in trying to infiltrate the WinTel market to go for them Ai dollars?
The strategic significance of Arm's current transformation lies in its transition from a volume-dependent mobile component provider to a value-driven infrastructure architect. As the global smartphone market faces structural saturation, the organization is pivoting toward Agentic and Physical AI to redefine its commercial relevance. The core of this strategy is to increase the average selling price per chip by packing higher complexityâmeasured in core density and orchestration capabilitiesâinto each unit, thereby ensuring revenue growth even as hardware shipment volumes stabilize.
Read the full articleThe Hot Take: Ai usage growing pretty steady and fast it would appear.
Anthropic is partnering with SpaceX to ease capacity constraints that have stranded Claude customers, a gesture that may soothe developer discontent about service availability and cost. Ami Vora, chief product officer at Anthropic, announced the expanded rate limits during Code for Claude, a developer event livestreamed from San Francisco. "As of today, we are increasing rate limits for developers on Claude Code and the Claude Platform," said Vora. "More specifically, we are doubling Claude Code's five-hour rate limits for Pro, Max, Team, and seat-based enterprise plans. And we're raising our API limits considerably for Claude Opus." Anthropic is also ending its peak hours limit reduction on Claude Code for Pro and Max accounts. The AI biz is able to do this, she explained, thanks to a partnership with SpaceX that expands available inference capacity. Anthropic has struck a deal to use "all the capacity of [SpaceXâs] Colossus 1 data center." According to SpaceX, "Colossus 1 features over 220,000 Nvidia GPUs, including dense deployments of H100, H200, and next-generation GB200 accelerators." The deal adds more than 300 megawatts of new capacity within the month and follows similar compute arrangements with Amazon and Google/Broadcom. The company's insatiable hunger for processing power may even take it into space. Anthropic says that it "expressed interest in partnering with SpaceX to develop multiple gigawatts of orbital AI compute capacity." In recent months, Anthropic has struggled to meet unexpected demand for Claude services â its models became sufficiently capable to win over skeptical developers and usage patterns shifted as a result of the popularity of OpenClaw's long-running agents. "Year over year, API volume is up nearly 17x on the cloud platform," said Vora. "And on Claude Code, the average developer is now spending 20 hours per week running Claude." Amid this growing popularity, Anthropic has also wrestled with bugs that affected model performance. During her presentation, Vora tempered expectations by noting that no new model would be announced. Instead, she presided over a review of new and recent Claude features in an effort to frame model improvements as exponential. The salient exponent here would be two â the doubling of Claude's five-hour rate limits. Model performance, as measured by benchmarks, has been incremental. Opus 4.7 is a few percentage points better than Opus 4.6 in various measurements, not twice as capable or more. That didn't stop Vora from claiming, "even though model capabilities are improving on an exponential, most organizations are still adopting AI on a linear path." Vora's use of "exponential" may be more of a thematic framing device than a literal assertion of progress, a device to draw a contrast between Claude's capabilities and a more cautious pace of corporate AI adoption. She cast the upcoming feature review as an opportunity for customers to see where Claude development is headed, "So you can plan for it and ride the exponential with us." The remainder of the presentation consisted of a summary of recent Claude feature improvements. These include: multi-agent orchestration, outcomes, and dreaming â a capability that showed up in the recent Claude Code source leak. "With Dreaming," explained Angela Jiang, head of product for the Claude platform, "Claude is actually able to self-learn. It's able to actually inspect over its previous sessions, figure out skills that it missed, lessons it should have learned, and actually apply those directly to memory on its own." Boris Cherny, head of Claude Code, took a turn on stage to remind everyone about Routines, a way to trigger and run Claude jobs locally or on cloud servers. "Routines can be run on a schedule, they can be kicked off by webhooks, or they can even be kicked off by arbitrary API calls, you can run them locally on your machine or on remote cloud compute," he said. Cherny said, "for me personally, a lot of my code nowadays is written by routines. I'm not the one doing the prompting. I'm the one creating a routine that does the prompting." Who wouldn't want to "ride the exponential" when one's company is paying the API bill? ÂŽ
Read the full articleThe Hot Take: Ai & GPUs need that bandwidth.
Rambus wants to address ongoing AI bandwidth problems with its new PCIe 7.0 Switch IP that features Time Division Multiplexing. Rambus Introduces PCIe 7.0 Switch IP with Time Division Multiplexing for Scalable AI and Data Center Infrastructure Press Release: Rambus, a premier chip and silicon IP provider making data faster and safer, today announced the Rambus PCIe 7.0 Switch IP with Time Division Multiplexing (TDM), a new addition to its advanced interconnect IP portfolio designed to address the rapidly escalating bandwidth, latency, and scalability requirements of AI, cloud, and high-performance computing (HPC) systems. As AI infrastructure grows in scale and architectural complexity, [âŚ]Read full article at https://wccftech.com/rambus-bets-on-time-division-multiplexing-to-fix-pcie-7-0-for-ai-workloads/
Read the full articleThe Hot Take: I'm so glad I've gotten the Lifetime pass, but as they up the price it only becomes a target to revoke in the coming future....
Plex's Remote Watch Pass is getting a 50% price hike starting June 1, 2026. Plex introduced the Remote Watch Pass in April 2025 as a cheaper alternative to the Plex Pass. Remote Watch Pass allows users to remotely stream from any Plex Media Server that a user has access to.
Read the full articleThe Hot Take: I feel this is FAR off, probably past PCIe 8.0 that just got written out.
Nvidia invests $300 million in Corning to help partners that deploy its hardware in the U.S. to get enough of optical fiber, grant Nvidia control over a significant chunk of domestic fiber production.
Read the full articleThe Hot Take: So was ARM not breaking into the WinTel market so they shifted to Ai market or are they just chasing the highest dollars?
Investment bank UBS reckons agentic AI will send CPU demand soaring, with Arm and AMD best placed to grab the spoils. UBS analysts believe the growth of agentic AI software will drive strong demand for CPUs in the AI era. The bank said agentic AI increases processor workloads and favours chips with higher core counts and better power efficiency. That view gives Arm the biggest potential upside, followed by AMD. Intel could benefit too, since a growing total addressable market tends to lift more than one silicon boat. In fresh coverage of British chip design house Arm, UBS said CPU demand is surging. The bank said agentic AI computing will favour chips with higher core counts and a bias towards power efficiency. UBS reckons the total server market could grow five times by calendar year 2030. It put the figure at $170bn, up from $30bn in calendar year 2025. Within that market, UBS expects Arm to benefit the most. The bank said Arm could potentially grab as much as 40-45 per cent of the total share, which would make the x86 crowd choke on its roadmaps. The bankâs report cited expert comments behind three main themes explaining the surge in CPU demand. The first is that agentic AI workloads rely more heavily on CPU cores. That shift is expected to require a three- to fivefold increase in CPU core counts per user and per GPU. Servers with standalone CPUs will need more chips, which is the kind of problem chip sellers enjoy having. UBS said that demand for agentic AI will push some workloads to local PCs. It pointed to Anthropicâs Claude Code as an example. The need for higher core counts and power efficiency should tilt demand first towards Arm and then AMD. That sounds grim for anyone still selling yesterdayâs watt-guzzling boxes as tomorrowâs AI answer. Chipzilla could still serve this market through its Coral Rapids platform, according to UBS. The catch is that benefiting from a bigger market and winning the best bits of it are not quite the same trick. Â
Read the full articleThe Hot Take: This gives me hope that the DIY market isn't dying. As it looks like it's dying a slow death with lack of refresh updates and availability due to "Ai Demand".
A new supply chain report has revealed what appears to be Intelâs processor roadmap through 2028, outlining several upcoming CPU architectures including Nova Lake, Razor Lake, Titan Lake, and Moon Lake.
Read the full articleThe Hot Take: While clawing back your market looking ahead as Google and Microsoft have been getting all the headlines with their "Quantum" Chips. Now if they can program quantum computers we might actually make a huge break through. Only thing is we'd be starting at where the 60s where with computers, large and clunky for sure.
QuantWare's US$178 million Series B round aims to accelerate the global rollout of larger, industrial-scale quantum processors, promising hyperscale quantum compute through its VIO-40K architecture and KiloFab foundry â a development that could reshape supply chains, national technology capabilities, and industrial adoption for countries seeking scalable quantum computing.
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