Hardware & Semiconductors

A Caltech-backed startup claims utility-scale quantum computers need far fewer qubits than previously estimated, potentially accelerating the timeline for cryptographically relevant machines to the end of the decade.

Both x86 chipmakers have notified OEMs of 10-15% price increases effective March-April, as AI data center demand consumes manufacturing capacity and pushes delivery times from weeks to months.

Nvidia takes a $2 billion stake in Marvell Technology, integrating one of the semiconductor industry's top custom ASIC designers into its NVLink Fusion interconnect platform.

Apple has permanently retired the Mac Pro tower with no successor planned, closing a 20-year chapter in professional computing as the Mac Studio becomes its flagship desktop.

Alibaba's Damo Academy has announced the XuanTie C950, a 5nm RISC-V CPU core capable of natively running hundred-billion-parameter language models, marking RISC-V's first serious entry into high-end AI computing.

Apple expands its U.S. supply chain initiative with four new semiconductor and sensor partners, committing $400 million as part of a broader $600 billion domestic investment push.

Google's seven-year open-source hardware security project reaches production in Dell Chromebooks with post-quantum cryptography, and data center deployment planned for later this year.

AMD's Instinct MI400 family debuts three CDNA 5 accelerators on TSMC 2nm alongside the 72-GPU Helios rack, but a production timeline dispute clouds the second-half 2026 launch.

Samsung has disclosed the first technical details of its Android XR-powered smart glasses, which will ship with a Qualcomm AR1 chipset and integrate Google's Gemini AI assistant. The device enters a market where Meta's Ray-Ban partnership holds an estimated 82 percent share.

Charles H. Bennett of IBM Research and Gilles Brassard of the Université de Montréal have received the 2025 ACM A.M. Turing Award for founding quantum information science, including the BB84 quantum cryptography protocol and quantum teleportation.

Samsung Electronics is negotiating three-to-five-year memory supply agreements with Google and Microsoft that could include more than 10 billion dollars in prepayments, as hyperscalers move to secure chip capacity amid a structural AI-driven shortage.

OFC 2026 drew 18,000 attendees as ST entered high-volume silicon photonics production, Lumentum showed VCSEL co-packaged optics, Coherent demoed a 6.4T CPO engine, and startups began sampling 3.2T photonic chips.