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Chips, consumer electronics and hardware
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Apple this week announced a new lineup of Mac mini and Mac Studio computers and officially sent invitations for its September iPhone event, where the iPhone 18 Pro is expected to take center stage. The product news was tempered by a rare round of layoffs affecting approximately 200 employees, a move that stands out for a company that has long avoided broad workforce reductions.
Speedo has unveiled a removable smart module for its Vanquisher goggles that tracks a swimmer's performance across all four major swim strokes—freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke, and butterfly—transmitting data wirelessly to a smartphone app after each session.
Sony has announced the Bravia 6 OLED TV, a more affordable addition to its OLED lineup designed to compete directly with midrange models from LG and Samsung, featuring a 120Hz panel, Dolby Vision and Atmos support, and Google TV with Gemini AI.
Google has unveiled a Pokémon Sleep-inspired special edition of its Fitbit Air wearable, featuring a 'Sleepy Blue' band decorated with a snoozing Pikachu. The device is available for preorder now for $129 and begins shipping September 15, timed to Pokémon's 30th anniversary celebrations.
Nvidia reported record quarterly revenue of $96.2 billion for the second quarter of fiscal 2027, up 106% year-over-year, as CEO Jensen Huang declared that artificial intelligence 'has reached its inflection point.' The company also disclosed memory procurement commitments of up to $160 billion, including a long-term supply pact with SK hynix, underscoring the scale of the AI infrastructure buildout.
Samsung has introduced the Galaxy S26 FE, a phone that prioritizes software parity over hardware innovation, retaining the same 6.7-inch OLED display, 4,900mAh battery, and triple rear camera as its predecessor while adding the Exynos 2500 chip and software features borrowed from this year's flagship models.
Samsung has announced its 2027 Odyssey gaming monitor lineup at Gamescom 2026, headlined by a 27-inch G6 model that now boasts an unprecedented 1,100Hz refresh rate — an upgrade from the 1,040Hz target revealed earlier this year. The company also introduced new OLED versions of the Odyssey G9, G8, and G7, which it says feature world-first innovations in display speed and design.
At the Hot Chips conference, OpenAI disclosed new architectural details and performance figures for its Jalapeño inference processor, claiming the custom ASIC co-developed with Broadcom beats Nvidia's GB200 and GB300 in low-latency inference and performance-per-watt. The chip, which reached tape-out in just nine months, uses a NUMA-style spatial architecture and can scale to 2,048 accelerators delivering a combined 27 exaFLOPS of MXFP4 performance.
Atari has announced the Atari x Activision Collection, a compilation of 39 classic Activision titles released on physical cartridges, with pricing ranging from $34.99 for individual standard editions to $999.96 for the Ultimate Deluxe Set that includes all games. The collection will be rolled out in four themed batches starting November 2026, targeting retro gaming fans and collectors who value physical media in an era increasingly dominated by digital distribution.
Apple is preparing to enter the camera-enabled wearable market with both smart glasses and AirPods equipped with integrated cameras, according to multiple reports, signalling a major push by the tech giant into a product category that has struggled to gain mainstream acceptance due to privacy and social concerns. The move comes as debate over glasses with built-in cameras continues, with industry observers suggesting Apple’s entry could normalise a technology that many consumers have so far rejected as intrusive or gimmicky.
Meta has detailed its new MTIA 400 custom AI accelerator at the Hot Chips conference, revealing a chip designed to handle both large language model training and the deep learning recommender model inference that powers its advertising business — a rare combination of workloads with vastly different performance demands.
Nvidia has announced NVHBM, a custom high-bandwidth memory implementation designed for partners in its NVLink Fusion program. The company says the tailored base die delivers up to 30% higher bandwidth per stack and 15% lower power consumption than commodity HBM4e, while also shrinking the memory-related footprint on custom accelerator dies.
IBM has announced a new dual-architecture processor for its IBM Z and LinuxONE systems, designed to natively support both the company's proprietary z/Architecture and Linux workloads. The chip, disclosed on August 24, 2026, represents the latest step in IBM's strategy to modernize mainframe computing for hybrid cloud deployments while preserving the reliability and security that have made mainframes indispensable for global financial, insurance, and government institutions.
Nintendo has confirmed that the Switch 2 console will increase in price by $50 starting Tuesday, September 1st, taking the base 256GB model from $449.99 to $499.99. The move, announced weeks in advance, comes amid an industry-wide memory chip shortage dubbed 'RAMageddon' that has also driven up prices for competing handhelds like the Steam Deck OLED by more than $200.
Apple on Wednesday sent invitations to a September 9 launch event at the Steve Jobs Theater, using the tagline “Surprise and shine.” The event, which will be livestreamed at 1PM ET, is expected to be the company’s first major product launch under incoming CEO John Ternus and could finally bring the long-rumored foldable iPhone to the stage.
Fujitsu detailed its 144-core Monaka server CPU at Hot Chips 2026 on August 24, confirming the Arm-based chip runs dual 256-bit SVE2 vector units and stacks its entire last-level cache on a separate 5nm die beneath a 2nm compute die. Evaluation samples are available now, with volume production scheduled for 2027.
Apple is upgrading recent Mac mini purchases to the newly announced M6 and M5 Pro models at no charge, according to reports from customers whose orders were still pending. The move, confirmed by multiple online sources, applies to backordered M4 configurations placed before yesterday's unveiling of the redesigned Mac mini line.
Microsoft has set an official price of $899 for its special-edition 25th anniversary Xbox, the company confirmed Tuesday, with preorders opening August 27th at 10AM ET. The translucent green console — a throwback to the original Xbox's iconic "OG Green" colorway — will launch November 13th and includes a matching controller, a full download of Halo: Campaign Evolved, and individually laser-etched numbering on each unit.
Arm provided extensive architectural details of its AGI data center CPU at the Hot Chips 2026 conference, revealing a dual-chiplet processor with up to 136 Neoverse V3 cores, a 2 TB/s UCIe interconnect, and a design philosophy that eschews the heterogeneous multi-chiplet approaches of rivals AMD, Intel, and Nvidia in favor of monolithic per-chiplet SoCs aimed at reducing DRAM latency.
At Hot Chips 2026, Google revealed its eighth-generation Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) family, including the TPU 8t for training and the TPU 8i for inference. The new chips mark a departure from previous unified designs, as Google continues to develop its own custom hardware for AI workloads, positioning itself as one of the few hyperscale cloud providers to build training-specific accelerators.
Apple on Tuesday announced the imminent refresh of its Mac mini and Mac Studio lines, positioning the compact desktops as powerful AI inference machines while acknowledging that rising memory costs are being passed on to customers. Pre-orders open now with shipping on September 22, 2026, and the new hardware runs macOS 27, expected in mid-September.
Meta Platforms has revealed its roadmap for the next generation of its Meta Training and Inference Accelerator (MTIA) family at the Hot Chips 2026 conference, outlining plans to release four new custom AI inference accelerators over the next two years. The move signals a significant escalation in the company's efforts to reduce dependence on commercial GPU suppliers and tailor hardware to its specific workloads.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has authorized the first wearable device capable of continuously monitoring both ketone levels and blood glucose, a milestone that could expand how patients with diabetes and people on ketogenic diets track their metabolic health. The agency announced the clearance on August 25, 2026, saying the device provides real-time data that previously required separate fingerstick tests or multiple sensors.
OpenAI unveiled benchmarks for its first in-house inference ASIC, Jalapeño, at the Hot Chips conference on Tuesday, claiming it outperforms Nvidia’s flagship GB300 in throughput per kilowatt and latency by significant margins. The chip, co-developed with Broadcom in a nine-month design cycle, is slated for deployment in OpenAI’s own data centers later this year, marking a strategic shift toward vertical integration amid a tight HBM memory market.
Samsung has introduced the industry's first LPDDR5X memory with processing-in-memory (PIM) capability, claiming up to 3.01x speed gains for AI inference and 8x bandwidth improvement over standard LPDDR5X. The new technology, detailed at the Hot Chips 2026 conference, embeds simple logic directly into each memory bank to perform basic calculations locally, reducing reliance on a central processor and cutting power consumption.
At this year's Hot Chips symposium, both Intel and Microsoft provided new architectural details on their respective AI inference accelerators: Intel's Crescent Island and Microsoft's Maia 200. Intel's presentation focused on the Xe3P architecture powering its 350W air-cooled PCIe card, while Microsoft detailed its second-generation server-side inference processor, signaling a growing competitive landscape in energy-efficient AI hardware.
Intel revealed at the Hot Chips 2026 conference that its budget Wildcat Lake processor, built on the advanced 18A node, uses the Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express (UCIe) standard to connect compute and I/O dies. This is the first time Intel has deployed UCIe in a low-cost part, a move the company says was essential to keep the chip affordable while still using cutting-edge IP. The processor is positioned as a competitor to Apple's MacBook Neo.
Tinkerers have released a new bootloader and root-access exploit called QuestStack that frees the original Meta Quest VR headset from reliance on Meta's servers and services, giving owners complete control over the hardware more than three years after the company officially ended support for the device.
OpenAI has published the first benchmarks for its custom Jalapeño chip, revealing significant improvements in throughput and latency specifically designed to address the compounding delays that occur when AI agents operate in sequence. The chip, developed in just nine months, was reportedly built with code partly rewritten by AI systems, marking a milestone in both hardware engineering and automated design.
Apple has announced the latest iteration of its Mac Mini desktop computer, powered by the new M6 chip, with a base model priced at $899. The announcement, made on August 25, 2026, positions the compact desktop as an affordable entry point into Apple's latest silicon, offering a balance of performance and value for consumers and professionals alike.
Apple has introduced the M5 Ultra and M6 processors, calling them its most powerful chips to date, alongside refreshed versions of the Mac Mini and Mac Studio. The August 25 announcement, first reported by TechCrunch, continues Apple’s strategy of designing custom silicon for its Mac lineup, aiming to deliver significant performance gains for professional and consumer users alike. Specific performance benchmarks and pricing details have not yet been released.
Apple announced today the first Mac mini update in nearly two years, introducing new M6 and M5 Pro configurations that offer a major performance boost while retaining the same compact design. The refreshed Mac mini is available for pre-order immediately.
Asus has officially launched the standalone version of its Xbox Ally X20 handheld gaming PC, priced at $1,300, with pre-orders open now and shipping on October 15. The device, which features a larger OLED screen and a 20th-anniversary translucent gold-trim design, was previously announced only as part of a bundle with expensive AR glasses, a requirement the company has now dropped following customer feedback.
Nvidia has disclosed new performance benchmarks and architectural details for its Vera CPU at the Hot Chips 2026 conference, positioning the 88-core chip as a purpose-built processor for agentic AI workloads. The company claims Vera runs a headless browser workflow 24% faster and compiles the Linux kernel 22% faster than AMD's top-end 96-core EPYC 9655P, while revealing that AMD's own executives were 'very happy' to see the results — suggesting the competitive landscape is far from settled.
Apple has unveiled its next-generation M6 chip, the company’s first fabricated on a 2-nanometer process, along with the M5 Ultra — which it calls its most powerful chip ever, designed for demanding tasks like 3D rendering and running frontier AI models. The M6 features a 12-core CPU up from 10 in the M5, a new super-core architecture, and a dual 16-core Neural Engine aimed at accelerating on-device AI workloads.
Apple announced a new generation of the Mac Mini on Tuesday, featuring M6 and M5 Pro chips, with prices starting at $899 for the M6 model and $1,699 for the M5 Pro—a $100 increase over the previous M4 generation. Preorders begin today, with shipments scheduled for September 22, according to The Verge.
Apple today announced the next-generation Mac Studio, powered by the M5 Max and M5 Ultra chips, offering up to 512GB of unified memory. The new desktop workstation is available for pre-order immediately, marking a significant leap in performance for creative professionals and developers.
James Park and Eric Friedman, the co-founders of Fitbit, have unveiled Luffu Link, a standalone LTE health and safety band that combines all-day health sensing, voice logging, location tracking, and emergency contact features into a single device – all without needing a phone nearby. The product marks the duo's first major hardware launch since leaving Fitbit and aims to carve out a new niche between fitness trackers and personal safety devices.
A consumer who purchased a new pair of camera glasses online discovered the device already contained video footage of Chinese factory workers who appear to have been unknowingly filmed, raising fresh alarms about privacy standards and manufacturing oversight in the global supply chain.
Lenovo has acknowledged that a recent BIOS update for its Legion Go handheld gaming PC has rendered some devices inoperable, after weeks of user complaints on Reddit about bricked units and repair bills approaching $300. The company's response so far has been limited to advising users to try a longer power button press and then contact customer support, leaving questions about whether affected customers will receive free repairs.
A recent report reveals that LG monitors have been secretly installing McAfee ad pop-ups onto connected Windows computers through driver updates, raising alarms that computer monitors—long considered a safe haven from the ad-driven privacy nightmare of smart TVs—are now being drawn into the same ecosystem of tracking and unwanted advertising.
Cerebras Systems, the company behind the world's largest computer chips, today announced the CS-4, its fourth-generation AI accelerator. CEO Andrew Feldman called it the fastest system in the industry, claiming a doubling of performance over the previous generation while using the same underlying chip design.
A research team at Kyoto University has fabricated a silicon carbide (SiC) transistor that reliably operates at 600°C (873 K) using ion implantation, a doping method common in commercial chip factories, closing the gap between designed and measured threshold voltage to under 0.1 V at 400°C — a dramatic improvement over the more than 2 V drift seen in conventional designs. The work, published in APL Electronic Devices, could enable electronics for jet engines, deep-well drilling, and Venus probes without requiring specialized fabrication processes.
The U.S. Army has tested an autonomous Ford F-250 truck equipped with a computer-controlled shotgun turret designed to destroy enemy drones, officials announced after a live-fire exercise at Fort Bragg on August 18 as part of the Project Sandhills 2.0 initiative.
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission has retroactively revoked certification for the HoverAir Versa, a 230-gram modular camera that can snap into a self-flying drone, just days after the device raised more than $230,000 on Indiegogo. The FCC stated the authorization was 'granted erroneously' and that the device constitutes a prohibited foreign-made unmanned aircraft system (UAS) critical component, apparently in willful violation of a December 2025 order banning such equipment.
A passenger's laptop caught fire aboard American Airlines Flight 2398 on Saturday, prompting the pilot to report a "cabin fire in the back" before the aircraft landed safely. A passenger was treated at the airport, according to BBC News.
Citing a sharp rise in memory and storage component costs, Amazon has raised prices on its Echo, Kindle, Fire TV, and Eero devices by up to 60 percent, the company confirmed to Fortune. The hikes affect products across the lineup, with the entry-level Echo Dot jumping from $49.99 to $79.99—a 60 percent increase—and the Kindle base model rising nearly 37 percent to $149.99. The move is the most visible consumer-facing symptom of a broader DRAM shortage that is now driving up costs for everything from AI servers to budget laptops.