Chips

Yesterday we found out the price of the new AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Dual Edition, the real name of a real product that I guess buyers are expected to learn.

Thought RAMageddon was bad? Wait until Silicon Valley loses access to 90 percent of the world’s chip supply. The New York Times reminds us that’s a possibility, with production concentrated in Taiwan, ever at risk of a Chinese blockade. The industry is now investing in US production, but has been putting this off for years.

Here’s yet another manufacturing pressure we have the AI chip boom to thank for: glass cloth. It’s a key component in the chip substrates for printed circuit boards, and the industry is mostly reliant on a single manufacturer in Japan, which can no longer keep up with demand.

After a string of exec departures from Apple, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported a few days ago that Srouji, who oversees the chips that have helped iPhones, Macs, and other devices lead their categories, had discussed leaving for another company.

Qualcomm’s new chip brings its 4nm process to the lowest end of its 6 series chips. It packs four Cortex-A78 performance cores at up to 2.4 GHz and four Cortex-A55 efficiency cores clocked at 1.8 GHz, a nice bump from the 2-and-6 arrangement of the 6s Gen 3. You won’t find too many phones out there running the 6s, but maybe a future version of the Moto G Stylus can benefit.

It’s claiming a “complete victory” in the companies’ legal battle over licensing, after a judge dismissed Arm’s attempt to have December’s jury trial either thrown out, or held all over again. Of course, Arm plans to appeal, leaving the chip industry’s biggest frenemies stuck in court a little longer.

If you care about who makes the processors that MediaTek, Samsung, and more use in their smartphone chips, you’ll want to know that Arm has released new CPUs and GPUs named Lumex. It marks the end of its “Cortex” cores, which now get boring names like “C1-Ultra” and “C1-Pro.”

AMD just reported its Q2 2025 earnings, and it’s attributing a new quarterly revenue record of $7.7 billion to one particular thing: “record server and PC processor sales.” And while AMD doesn’t mention its flagging competitor Intel, it seems many are turning to Team Red: AMD just crossed 40 percent market share for the first time on the Steam Hardware Survey of PC gamers, and it may have 40 percent server market share soon too.

Five to 20 percent, to be a little inexact. That’s according to AMD CEO Lisa Su, who told Bloomberg that components from TSMC’s Arizona facilities will cost more than similar parts made in Taiwan, but says it’s worth it for diversifying supply chains.