Hardware

Industry shift

The Hot Take: To me it the Computer industry is moving towards the model they used exactly on Automobiles. PC components are being priced out of consumer acceptable prices. Manufacturers are our pricing add in board manufacturers like MSI, Asus, etc. Leaving system OEMs like Apple, Lenovo, Dell & HP. All which are offering up leasing options, exactly the same way the automobile industry went decades ago when cars became to much to buy out right. I hope we can turn this back around.

RTX Spark’s Driver Paves Way For Unofficial eGPU Support On Snapdragon X2 Elite Laptops, Bringing 200+ FPS In Competitive Shooters Like Overwatch, With the Right GPU

The Hot Take: This is the biggest limitation to ARM SoC's as their GPU's are mid-range. So acceptance from gamers will require ability to get high end GPU for performance.

The Snapdragon X2 Elite might have doubled down on compute performance, but a multitude of tests show that its GPU continues to be one of the weakest links of the SoC. Fortunately, a user shows that the RTX Spark driver has introduced unofficial eGPU support through a USB4 connection, allowing you to experience competitive shooters like Overwatch at upwards of 200FPS. Redditor shares “simple to follow” instructions on how to bring eGPU support to Snapdragon X2 Elite laptops Notebooks like the ASUS Zenbook A16 offer a solid configuration to…

Qualcomm won’t be a big datacenter player anytime soon

The Hot Take: They just said that iPhone model loss would be off set by datacenter sales. So i guess they'll be hurting for a bit.

Qualcomm has predicted its entry to the datacenter market will yield $15 billion of annual revenue by FY 2029 – huge growth, but also a modest number compared to its more established rivals. The chip design firm dangled the $15 billion figure on Wednesday along with its Q3 results, which included a warning that revenue from its business selling modems to Apple is about to crater. Execs told investors that supply chain constraints mean Qualcomm expects “an acceleration in the step down of Apple product revenues” as its contribution to the next…

Intel hands Atom blueprints to Tan’s mate

The Hot Take: Another company given x86 tech? Will it go the way of VIA, or will they run and enhance it to bring a 4th strong competitor to the x86 ISA market?

Intel is handing Atom chip IP to Rosaic, a startup run by one of Lip-Bu Tan’s old mates, Amarjit Gill. Gill has history with Intel chief executive Lip-Bu Tan, who has spent years as a semiconductor investor as well as an industry operator. According to Reuters, Gill invested with Tan in high-performance chip startup Nuvia and worked with him on RISC-V chip outfit Rivos. Chipzilla’s Atom chips are built for low-power jobs, where they mostly scrap with designs from British chip blueprint outfit Arm. At one point, Chipzilla aimed Atom at…

Intel Nova Lake Desktop APU Rumored With 12 Xe3P Cores and 65W Power Tier

The Hot Take: APU is the cousin of ARM's SoC. Mid-range across the board if you ask me is what I'm seeing the industry shifting to.

Intel is reportedly developing a socketed Nova Lake-S processor with substantially stronger integrated graphics than recent desktop Core products. Information attributed to hardware leaker Jaykihn describes a configuration with twelve Xe3P graphics cores.

Uncle Sam sees the light, offers GlobalFoundries $300M to pursue silicon photonics while taking 1% stake

The Hot Take: AMD past manufacturing arm getting US funds? We will see if they do anything productive to the industry, as it seems they aren't since they were created in my eyes.

The US government has signed a letter of intent to provide GlobalFoundries with $300 million in CHIPS Act funding and, at the same time, receive a one percent stake in the company worth roughly $269 million. The money's supposedly not a tit-for-tat, but an investment designed to spur development of silicon photonics networking technologies that the AI industry needs for datacenters. “With today’s compute supply chain investments, the Trump Administration is accelerating America’s innovation engine,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said in a…

Intel Cracks The Encapsulation Wall Blocking Hyper-Large Chips, Pushing Advanced Packaging To 24x Reticle Size and Beyond

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…

MSI Refused A Motherboard Replacement Of A Customer’s $6,000 Gaming Laptop, Saying It “Would Cost More Than Purchasing A New Unit”

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,”…

Intel Emerges as America’s Only Leading-Edge Chipmaker as RAMP-C Hands the Department of War Domestic 18A Production

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…

NVIDIA RTX Spark Shows Strong Potential, But Early Prototype Leaves Plenty Of Performance On The Table

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…