The Hot Take: Great news as we need healthy competition for x86 in a world being crowded by ARM SoC chips. We'll see soon which architecture wins out but we still have RISC-V around the corner, where intel is a board member of that ISA. I feel this limiting ram on devices might be to push in ARM/RISC into acceptance...
Demand for Intel's products exceed expectations and supply, but Intel is still bleeding money.
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By ckasprzak | TkOut | April 23, 2026 |
Hardware
The Hot Take: Cool, I mean if it makes sense I'm all for it.
Shortly after their discovery, carbon nanotubes seemed to be a material wonder. There were metallic and semiconducting forms; they were tiny and incredibly light; and they could only be broken by tearing apart chemical bonds. The ideas for using them seemed endless.
But then the reality of working with them set in. It was hard to get a pure population of metallic or semiconducting forms. Synthesis techniques tended to produce a tangle of mostly short nanotubes; those that extended for more than a couple of centimeters remain rare. And while the metallic version offered little resistance to carrying electric current, it was hard to send many electrons down the nanotube.
Materials scientists, however, are a stubborn bunch, and they're still trying to get them to work. Today's issue of Science includes a paper describing the addition of a chemical to carbon nanotube bundles to boost their ability to carry current to levels closer to those of copper. While the more conductive nanotubes weren't stable, the discovery may point the way toward something with a longer shelf life.Read full article
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The Hot Take: Intel needs this licensing support as other law suits are back in court with patent trolls....
Elon Musk reveals details about TeraFab: Intel provides technology, Tesla builds pilot line, SpaceX constructs high-volume fab.
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The Hot Take: Good news for both of them! TSMC needs to be brought into check on 2nm to bring prices down for all of us.
Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon has been spotted in Korea meeting with Samsung executives. The trip is all about manufacturing chips on the 2nm process, and there's a chance that Qualcomm will turn to Samsung to fabricate the upcoming Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 SoCs.
Back at CES in January, Amon revealed that Qualcomm was talking to Samsung about this, and it seems like the discussions are still ongoing. If all this pans out and Qualcomm does indeed pick Samsung to fab the next top of the line Snapdragon SoC, it would mark a return to the Korean company for the first time since 2022, which is...
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The Hot Take: US Domestic manufacturing is going to be getting slammed here soon.
Elon Musk lays out the plans for Tesla's future AI ecosystem, utilizing both Samsung & TSMC 2nm tech for AI6 & AI6.5 chips. Tesla's 2nm Duo Confirmed: AI6 Goes Samsung With LPDDR6 & AI6.5 Goes TSMC With Improved Performance A few days ago, Tesla announced the successful tape out of its AI5 chip, made at Samsung. The chip is just one of the many custom silicon designs that Elon Musk and his enterprises are making to fulfill their in-house AI demand. Musk also talked about the next-generation chips, such as AI6 and the Dojo3 supercomputer project. The company is aiming […]Read full article at https://wccftech.com/tesla-pulls-2nm-ai-chip-production-onto-us-soil-splits-ai6-ai6-5-between-samsung-tsmc/
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The Hot Take: More good news on them clawing back to relevance again in the manufacturing arena.
Intel's Foundry business will soon house some big names by the end of this year as its 14A technology gains huge momentum. Intel 14A Technology Will Be A Game Changer For Chipzilla As It Hopes To Get Some Big Names Onboard By The End of This Year Intel's Foundry success relies a lot of it's upcoming 14A process technology. The 14A node is designed to attract external customers more so than it is designed for internal use. That's something that 18A is built for. So far, Intel hasn't publicly named any big customers for its 14A technology, but it makes […]Read full article at https://wccftech.com/intel-to-land-big-14a-wins-with-surprise-customers-by-the-end-of-this-year/
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The Hot Take: Good sign that Intel is clawing back it's manufacturing prowess.
Stripped-down Ultra for laptops and low-power edge boxes Intel brought a few more chips home from Taiwan this week, with a new round of budget-oriented Core Series 3 processors fabbed right in the US-of-A.…
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The Hot Take: Nice, competition domestically is the best thing to see going on. I'm cheering on intel but Samsung and TSMC domestically too.
Samsung has made a massive investment in a cutting-edge chipmaking plant in Taylor, Texas. A $16.5 billion order from Tesla has already been secured for its next-generation self-driving chips.
A new report claims that Samsung's Taylor plant is now close to launch, with Tesla's chips likely to be produced from the second half of this year.
This is one of Samsung's biggest investments in the US
A report out of South Korea mentions that Samsung will host a major equipment move-in ceremony at the Taylor plant on April 24th. Key Samsung Electronics executives are said to attend this event, including Han Jin-man, the president of the company's foundry division.
This has been a long time coming. Samsung initially broke ground on the project back in November 2022. The Taylor fab was projected to begin operations in October 2024. However, given the lack of visibility on major orders, Samsung had delayed production activities.
It then received a shot in the arm from Tesla last year when the automaker confirmed it had signed a $16.5 billion deal with Samsung for its AI5 and AI6 chips to be built at the Taylor fab. Samsung views its Taylor fab as key to catching up with TSMC, its biggest rival in the contract chipmaking space, which already enjoys a dominant lead over the Korean aspirant.
Samsung's focus on making 2nm production capacity available at its US plant is meant to offer major customers like Microsoft and Meta a viable alternative to TSMC's US plant which operates on the 4nm process technology.
Major chip designers will closely watch how Samsung is able to deliver on these 2nm Tesla chips. If yields are stable at mass production volumes, it could unlock a surge in orders for Samsung as TSMC simply doesn't have the capacity to absorb all of the 2nm orders.
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The Hot Take: Interesting move for the two of them.
As Intel joins Elon Musk's TeraFab project, Lip-Bu Tan expects Elon Musk to reimagine the semiconductor industry.
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The Hot Take: Electronics will soon be dirt cheap again in the USA soon enough.
New rumor indicates that TSMC is looking forward to expand its presence in the U.S. to 12 fabs and four packaging facilities.
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