Intel’s been talking the talk for months about its new generation of laptop chips, the first made on its long-anticipated 18A process. 18A is meant to steer Intel back toward bluer waters by making its chips better, and, if possible, attracting chip designers like Qualcomm and Nvidia to use Intel’s foundries, not just its rival […]
From leadership changes at legacy semiconductor companies to wishy washy policy around chip exports, a lot happened last year.
In 2024, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X chips finally made Arm-based Windows laptops viable. Unlike previous Arm laptops that struggled to even run Windows well, this new class offered solid performance and the best battery life on Windows, and they impressed us in Microsoft’s own Surface Laptop and Surface Pro offerings. But inconsistent app compatibility remained the […]
Happy Holidays! As we like to do on The Vergecast, we take this time of year to see our families, relax and recharge, and go extremely deep into a specific technology that matters right now. This year, we picked the tiny chip in all your devices that is suddenly a precious and expensive commodity: RAM. […]
A new software option could make it possible to see the approximate location of some of Nvidia’s AI chips.
Memory suppliers just blew a hole in the PC gaming industry – and they’re about to do the same to everything else. For weeks, PC enthusiasts have borne the brunt of skyrocketing memory prices, but the shockwaves will soon impact a wider range of products as suppliers pour resources into a far bigger and more […]
The $2 billion investment in Synopsys, which makes software and components for designing semiconductor chips, deepens their existing partnership at a time when analysts scrutinize circular AI-industry deals and warn of a potential bubble.
Intel has defended itself against accusations that its latest executive hire stole trade secrets, as TSMC sues the exec and Taiwanese prosecutors say they’ve begun a probe into the incident. Wei-Jen Lo, a Taiwanese engineer, joined Intel this fall, hired to help the company improve its mass production processes. He’d previously worked at the American […]
When Qualcomm announced its high-end Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset in November, it mentioned that a non-Elite version was on the way, designed to power a more affordable tier of flagship phones. Now, that chip has finally arrived, with some drops in performance but the same core feature set. Qualcomm compares the 8 Gen […]
Arizona’s economy was once dominated by the “five C’s”: cotton, cattle, citrus, copper, and climate. But a new C has emerged that could grow to overshadow the rest: chips. New semiconductor manufacturing facilities are springing up across the greater Phoenix area, stretching across blocks of new roads with names like “Processor Parkway” and “Transistor Terrace.” […]