AMD's Madhu Rangarajan, corporate VP of Compute and Enterprise AI, says the company never set out to build its Zen 6 EPYC 9006 "Venice" chips around agentic AI, a not-so-subtle dig at NVIDIA and Arm, which both pitch their latest server CPUs as made for that exact job. Rangarajan still called EPYC 9006 the best CPU for agentic workloads during a media session covered by Tom's Hardware. Chief Zen architect Mike Clark said much the same in a separate talk, admitting AMD didn't see agentic computing coming, though he added that the company always expected the CPU to keep a role in AI software. Here's what Rangarajan said:

We think that the EPYC 9006 CPU is the best CPU for the agentic era, and spoiler alert, we didn't magically know four years ago that agentic was going to be a thing and purpose-built something for agentic. The reality is an agentic workflow is a diverse set of tasks… and in order to execute those tasks well, you need compute that is able to handle a diverse set of workloads with a full portfolio.

Innovation across the semiconductor industry continues to accelerate, driven by growing demand for AI, more capable intelligent connected devices, and specialized computing across industries. As applications become increasingly diverse, silicon partners need access to a broad portfolio of advanced, power-efficient compute technologies to meet different performance, power and cost requirements.

Through Arm Flexible Access and Arm Total Access, Arm provides that choice, giving silicon partners access to a wide range of technologies to develop differentiated products and bring them to market faster. Today, Arm is expanding both portfolios with the new Arm Cortex-M42 processor, bringing efficient AI compute capabilities to more intelligent devices.

The Arch Linux-based distribution Omarchy 4.5 has been released, the project's first expansion beyond x86-64. It adds Apple Silicon support, a new floating desktop mode, and a few other updates. Omarchy now runs on Apple M1, M2, M3, and Neo MacBooks. The Apple Silicon support builds on work by the Asahi Linux project and other contributors. It also adds preliminary support for NVIDIA's Arm-based N1X laptops and the DGX Spark systems. However, support for newer Apple M4, M5, and M6 models and Qualcomm Snapdragon X-based laptops is still in development. According to project creator David Heinemeier Hansson, the release includes more than 740 merged pull requests from over 180 contributors during a 12-week development cycle.

The desktop experience remains based on the Hyprland compositor. Users can now switch individual workspaces between tiling, scrolling, and floating layouts using the Super + L shortcut. Floating workspaces have conventional window title bars and a dock with pinned applications, running programs, and an application launcher. Windows can be minimized to the dock with Super + M. Also, applications can be pinned or rearranged via drag and drop to the dock. Users can mix different layouts across workspaces.

Today (November 4, 2026), Arm (NASDAQ: ARM) published a letter to its shareholders containing the company's results for its second quarter of fiscal year 2027, which ended September 30, 2026. The infographic below provides the key highlights for the quarter:

Here are what the results mean and how they were achieved:

• Total revenue for Arm in Q2 FYE27 increased 27% year over year to $1.44 billion, representing Arm's highest ever second quarter. This reflects strong execution and growing demand for the Arm compute platform.
• Record second quarter was driven by strong licensing and other revenue of $773 million, reflecting a 50% year-over-year increase, an important leading indicator of future royalty growth. Meanwhile, royalty revenue for the quarter reached $670 million, with data center royalties doubling year over year.
• For the first time, Arm's partners reported more than 10 billion Arm-based chips shipped during the quarter - an increase of 1.5 billion chips year over year - adding to the scale of the platform already used by more than 30 million developers.

An open-source project called nxnative lets Nintendo Switch games run natively on Apple Silicon, without an emulator in between. Built by developer seedds, the tool takes a user's own game files and prod.keys and turns them into an app for iPhone, iPad, or Mac. YouTuber Andrew Tsai put it to the test on Macs, where Monster Hunter Rise held a locked 60 FPS on a base fanless M1 MacBook Air with 8 GB of RAM. Unicorn Overlord, Dragon Quest XI S, and Dark Souls Remastered also ran, though Doom Eternal refused to boot.

Since the Switch and Apple's chips both use the Arm64 instruction set, nxnative rewrites the game's code to run directly on the Apple chip, swaps the Switch's Horizon OS for a small stand-in host, and rebuilds Nintendo's NVN graphics API on top of Metal. Shader translation is borrowed from Ryujinx, the Switch emulator that Nintendo shut down in 2024. The approach itself comes from d2r-mobile, which did the same for Diablo II: Resurrected. The README now lists around 70 tested games, mostly aimed at the iPhone 15 Pro or newer and iPads with M1 or later, and Mac apps need an extra build step. There's also no online play or amiibo support.

NVIDIA has released version 1.9.0 of RTX Path Tracing (RTXPT), its open-source reference path tracer on GitHub, claiming roughly 20% better performance than the previous 1.8.1 release, with comparable or better image quality. RTXPT is a code sample for developers, meant as a starting point for building a path tracer or as a reference for NVIDIA's other ray tracing SDKs. Several changes add up to that uplift. The path tracer can now optionally trace only three quarters, half, or a quarter of the pixels each frame, and the built-in performance presets use this by default, along with lower bounce limits in the faster modes.

On DirectX 12, async compute lets the previous frame's DLSS Ray Reconstruction and post-processing overlap with the next frame's path tracing, and TLAS instance generation has moved to the GPU. Lighting got some attention too. NEE-AT light sampling now handles up to 2 million lights, up from 512K, and the SHaRC radiance cache is on by default in real-time mode, apparently feeding more indirect lighting into DLSS Ray Reconstruction at about the same cost. Version 1.9 also adds Windows on ARM64 support. The release notes don't say why, though it's probably no coincidence, given NVIDIA's own Arm-based RTX Spark chip for Windows PCs.

ASUS has started rolling out a preview GPU driver that brings AMD FSR 4.1 upscaling to the ROG Xbox Ally X and ROG Xbox Ally X20. Owners can grab it through Armoury Crate SE under Update Center, then Preview Updates. This follows AMD's announcement earlier this week that FSR 4.1 is expanding to Radeon RX 6000 series GPUs, APUs, and Xbox. According to ASUS, the handheld version runs on a lighter model that is less than half the size of the original INT8 model, built with the Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme in mind. FSR 4.1 works in over 400 games that support FSR 3.1 or newer. Handheld owners have waited a while for this, as AMD previously had no definitive decision on RDNA 3.5 APUs before confirming FSR 4 for APUs by the end of 2026.

Once FSR is enabled in a game's settings, users also have to add the FSR tile in Command Center and switch it on. ASUS warns that RSR, the system-level upscaler, should not be combined with it. Neither AMD nor ASUS has shared any performance numbers yet, and ASUS notes that preview updates may still have bugs. As for the regular ROG Xbox Ally, ASUS says it will also get support through a GPU driver update coming soon, though there's no date yet. The Xbox Series X|S consoles are next in line and will reportedly get FSR 4.1 in the coming weeks, while FSR Diamond has already been teased for Project Helix.

A developer who goes by levi on X has announced Utsuro, a new project that runs Xbox One games on Apple devices. It's still very early, but the developer says it already runs Minecraft: Xbox One Edition "extremely well," and the attached video shows it running on iOS with touchscreen controls. According to the project's GitHub page, Minecraft hits around 36 to 60 FPS on the Mac build, and Sonic Mania and Rocket League run there too, complete with screenshots. Sonic Mania is marked as playable at around 57 FPS with sound, while Rocket League renders and drives at roughly 15 to 20 FPS, with dark lighting and no audio yet.

Utsuro also works differently from a typical emulator. Apparently, it skips hardware emulation altogether and runs the console's Windows-based software layer as x86-64 code on Apple's Arm chips through FEXCore, and fills in the system pieces the console itself would normally provide. Graphics go through Apple's Metal API, with the Xbox One's Direct3D 11.X shaders converted to Metal's shader language, while audio runs on CoreAudio. Getting it running isn't exactly simple either. On iOS, the app has to be sideloaded, needs a JIT helper like StikDebug, TrollStore, or a jailbroken device, and expects a decrypted dump of the game. The macOS version currently has to be built from source.

TrendForce's latest AI server industry research indicates that demand for server CPUs has grown steadily since the second half of 2025 as AI server providers actively introduce AI agent applications. Server CPU shipments are projected to increase 31% YoY in 2026.

In 2027, continued growth in AI inference demand and rising adoption of agentic AI services are expected to drive server CPU shipments up by more than 40% YoY, potentially reshaping a market landscape traditionally dominated by x86 processors.

Microsoft might be working on a cheaper 12-inch Surface, and Apple's MacBook Neo looks like the reason. DigiTimes reports, citing supply chain sources, that Microsoft is reviewing the specifications of its entry-level 12-inch Surface to bring costs down, and is also rethinking which processor goes inside. The report's headline, spotted by harukaze5719 on X, goes as far as saying Apple is forcing Microsoft to downgrade the device, and hints at a comeback for AMD with an Arm chip. Reportedly, the processor, memory, camera, battery, and chassis are all being looked at, though nothing seems to be finalized yet.

The pricing gap between the two laptops is quite large. Microsoft only just refreshed the 12-inch Surface Pro with Snapdragon X2 Plus, and it now starts at $1,149, up from $799 last year, partly because the 8 GB base configuration was dropped. Apple launched the MacBook Neo at $599, and even after a $100 increase in June that Apple blamed on memory costs, it still sits at $699. As for the chip, AMD's "Sound Wave" Arm APU was previously linked to Microsoft's 2026 Surface lineup and has even shown up in shipping manifests, so it looks like a candidate. Leaks put it at 2 performance and 4 efficiency Arm cores, RDNA 3.5 graphics with 4 CUs, and a 5 W to 10 W power target. Then again, Microsoft could just as well stick with Qualcomm, and neither Microsoft nor AMD has confirmed anything.

Synaptics Incorporated (Nasdaq: SYNA) today introduced the xMCU, a new class of microcontrollers that runs multimodal Edge AI, with the launch of the Synaptics Astra SR200 Series. Unlike conventional MCUs constrained by limited on-chip memory and compute, the xMCU combines heterogeneous, AI-native compute and acceleration with integrated high-bandwidth custom DRAM scalable to hundreds of megabytes, enabling larger AI models and richer multimodal workloads to run entirely on-device. The Astra SR200 Series of xMCUs is designed for the next generation of AI wearables, battery-powered sensing devices, connected cameras, streamers, and industrial vision and voice systems.

The SR200 Series is powered by the Synaptics Torq AI engine, which brings a standards-based hardware architecture and unified developer experience featuring the Coral NPU from Google Research. It also comes with the industry's first pairing of the Arm Cortex -M85 and Cortex -M52. Together with integrated vision and audio capabilities and hardware-rooted security, the SR200 Series brings unmatched system design efficiency and cost benefits to Edge and Physical AI designs.

NVIDIA today announced the availability of NVIDIA RTX Spark laptops, bringing together RTX graphics and NVIDIA's full-stack AI platform in slim, premium Windows PCs for accelerated creation, immersive gaming and powerful local AI—rolling out from ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Microsoft and MSI.

Combining decades of NVIDIA innovation into a single superchip, RTX Spark delivers up to 128 GB of unified memory and 1 petaflop of FP4 AI performance to run large language models and AI agents locally. On a single device, creators, developers and gamers can move seamlessly between their everyday workflows and emerging AI agents on the familiar Windows platform.

A Delaware jury has found that Arm breached its Architecture License Agreement (ALA) with Qualcomm, but the award is about as small as it gets. Reuters reports that Qualcomm gets just $2 in nominal damages, $1 for each of the two claims it won. The jury agreed that Arm withheld software patches and verification tools Qualcomm needed to validate its custom Oryon CPU cores, and that Arm intentionally interfered with Qualcomm's business with Meta. That second claim ties back to October 2024, when Arm's 60-day notice to cancel Qualcomm's license ended up with Bloomberg, a leak Qualcomm pinned on Arm. Arm won the rest of the claims, most of which were about pricing under its separate Technology License Agreement (TLA).

The bigger question, however, is still open. Judge Maryellen Noreika has yet to decide whether Arm's breach lets Qualcomm stop paying royalties under the ALA for five years, which, by some estimates, could be worth billions of dollars. Arm argues that provision is an unenforceable penalty. Unsurprisingly, both sides are spinning the result in their favor, with Qualcomm saying it was "gratified" by the verdict and Arm pointing out that it won most of the claims. This is the second round between the two companies. In December 2024, a jury found that Qualcomm didn't breach its license by acquiring Nuvia, and the court entered a final judgment in Qualcomm's favor in September 2025. Arm has since appealed that ruling, and it's reasonable to expect an appeal here too, depending on how the royalty question goes.

An open-source app called DroidDeck is letting Snapdragon-powered Android devices run Valve's Steam client and Windows PC games on the device itself, with no streaming from a PC or the cloud involved. As VideoCardz reports, YouTuber ETA Prime tested it on a RedMagic 11 Pro with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 and 16 GB of memory, where Cyberpunk 2077 ran at around 60 FPS on medium settings. Skyrim Special Edition hit a similar figure at 720p, while Hogwarts Legacy was tougher on the phone and sat around 40 FPS even with lower settings and FSR.

Other solutions like Steam Link stream games from another PC, whereas DroidDeck runs them on the device itself. It loads Valve's ARM64 Linux Steam client in Big Picture mode as a regular Android app, and Windows games go through Valve's ARM64 Proton with x86 translation. Projects like Armada instead replace Android with SteamOS entirely, and DroidDeck needs neither that nor root access. It also handles GPU driver switching, AMD FSR and Snapdragon GSR upscaling, and frame generation through Lossless Scaling.

Googlebook laptops arrived only a few weeks ago, and Googlebook OS is already running on hardware Google never built it for. Developer Skylar Taylor-Barrick has published gbos-vm, an open-source project that boots the OS inside a GPU-accelerated virtual machine on Apple Silicon Macs, with Chrome working. Apparently, the install script downloads Google's own recovery image for the Dell XPS Googlebook, an ARM64 build based on Android 17, replaces the hardware-specific vendor partition with virtual device components from Google's Cuttlefish project, and boots it under QEMU.

The Dell is one of the Snapdragon X-powered Googlebooks, so its Arm image runs on the Mac's hypervisor without emulation. That also means Intel Macs are out. Googlebook OS renders through Vulkan while Macs use Metal, so the project passes Vulkan calls through MoltenVK. The README asks for 16 GB of RAM, 60 GB of free storage, Xcode command line tools, and the Android SDK with NDK, plus a hefty 9 GB of downloads. First boot takes about 45 seconds on an M5 MacBook, which is the only machine the developer lists as tested.

Following what appears to have been a series of unfortunate events that led to a roadside laptop find resulting in confirmation that Microsoft will be launching a 20-core NVIDIA RTX Spark Surface Laptop, we now appear to have confirmation that Microsoft will also be launching a Surface Laptop Ultra on the other end of the Spark spectrum. According to Windows Central, Microsoft will reveal the full RTX Spark Surface line-up on October 7 at a special event in San Francisco.

Alongside the 20-core variant, the Windows Central report claims that Microsoft will launch a Surface Laptop with NVIDIA's 18-core RTX Spark. It is also claimed that the 18-core SKU will start with 24 GB of unified memory, while the 24-core version will start with 32 GB of memory. There will reportedly be a performance demonstration that shows off how the new Arm SoC delivers the same level of performance on battery life as it does when plugged into the wall.

Valve has confirmed that its Steam Client for Linux-based operating systems on Arm chips is not officially supported. This follows a user's report on GitHub claiming issues with Steam for Linux on ARM64 systems. Despite detailing the problem, a Valve developer responded that "Steam for Linux is not currently supported on Arm-based hardware," a stance that has been consistent for years. While Steam has expanded on Linux-based machines, official support is currently limited to systems running x86-64 processors from AMD and Intel. On Arm-based devices, Valve would likely need to make significant optimizations to get Steam for Linux working properly, but the potential user base is so small that the effort may not be justified.

This is surprising given that Valve's VR headset, the Steam Frame, runs on Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 mobile platform. Valve specifically optimized its SteamOS for this chipset and ported its compatibility layer, Proton 11.0, to Arm. This version of Proton allows a full range of games designed for x86 to run on Arm hardware, but the Steam Client itself, which is crucial for game delivery, is not officially supported.

ASUS today announced a new 64 GB configuration of ASUS Ascent GX10, expanding the lineup alongside the existing 128 GB model. This compact AI supercomputer is designed to bring local agentic AI development within reach of more developers, researchers and data scientists. Based on the NVIDIA DGX Spark platform and powered by the full NVIDIA AI software stack, ASUS Ascent GX10 64 GB delivers the same petaflop-scale architecture found on ASUS Ascent GX10 128 GB in a memory configuration built for today's efficient open-source models—enough to build and run today's most capable 30-35B class models and autonomous agents. When workloads grow, two systems can be clustered with the NVIDIA Sync Cluster Assistant for 128 GB of pooled memory and around 1.7X the throughput.

Ubiquitous AI, engineered for more builders
Guided by its Ubiquitous AI. Incredible Possibilities. strategy, ASUS is working to put agentic AI within reach of every builder, empowering not only the early professional AI teams already running frontier-scale models locally, but the much larger early-majority audience of developers, researchers and AI-curious teams who are ready to start experimenting hands-on.

Valve has released a new update for the Steam Frame VR headset that significantly extends battery life. With the launch of SteamOS 0.4.3, which is essentially a regular SteamOS version optimized for the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 Arm-based SoC, Valve has pushed the Steam Frame headset into a more power-efficient mode, achieving up to 12% longer battery life. While this is a theoretical maximum boost, the actual battery life will heavily depend on the framerate the VR headset is outputting and the content being displayed. In practice, you can expect a modest increase in battery life for average usage tasks. Valve has likely made low-level optimizations in its software stack to enhance the Steam Frame's power efficiency.

Additionally, SteamOS 0.4.3 for Steam Frame now includes an eye-tracking option that is limited to single-eye tracking. Users can enable this in VR Settings > General > Track Dominant Eye Only, but note that it requires enabling "show advanced settings." Other fixes include improved focus behaviors when interacting with grab/resize handles and resolving an issue where controller bindings weren't loading in certain games, including Thumper and Google Earth VR.

ASUS has already shown off its upcoming ProArt 16 creator laptop powered by the NVIDIA RTX Spark N1X Arm SoC at IFA 2026, but there was no exact launch date attached to the new laptops when we published our hands-on coverage on the show floor. Now, thanks to a new Weibo post by the official ASUS account, it has been revealed that ASUS will launch the ProArt P16 H7607BA (or a similar variant) on October 8, 2026—at least in China. It's not clear if this will be a simultaneous international launch, but, even if it isn't, an international launch shouldn't be too far behind.

ASUS on Weibo (machine translation)Smooth local AI agent response, creative workflows no longer reliant on the cloud
World's first AI agent PC | ASUS ProArt 16
Equipped with NVIDIA RTX Spark N1X super chip
Reconstructing the boundaries of professional creation, local computing power accelerates the implementation of the entire workflow
Coming October 8th

AMD's processors are notoriously missing from Microsoft's latest Surface device line-up, despite there being more CPU options in Microsoft Surface PCs than ever before, including an upcoming NVIDIA SKU. In a recent statement to Windows Central, Microsoft's Surface Corporate Vice President, Brett Ostrum, explained that this absence is deliberate, although not malicious, stating that Microsoft has a limited portfolio and needs to make smart choices about its offerings.

We love working with AMD. We have a limited portfolio, and so we have to make our choices pretty wisely in terms of what we're doing and where we're doing.

Valve's SteamOS port for the Arm (ARM64) architecture has inspired creativity in the modding community, as they are now actively transforming their Android-based gaming handhelds into miniature versions of the Steam Deck console. As mobile SoCs like Qualcomm's Snapdragon and MediaTek's Dimensity become increasingly competitive in terms of integrated GPU and CPU capabilities, running a true desktop OS on these SoCs is unlocking new gaming experiences, as demonstrated by the modding community. For devices from makers like Ayaneo, Ayn, Retroid, and Konkr, community projects like Armada enable Arm-based devices that previously ran Android to utilize SteamOS.

This development is made possible by earlier changes Valve introduced specifically for its Steam Frame VR headset. Since the Steam Frame runs on Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 mobile platform, Valve ported its compatibility layer, Proton 11.0, to Arm. This version of Proton unlocked a full range of games designed for x86 on Arm hardware. While it was initially intended to be exclusive to the Steam Frame, it now also enables compatibility with other Arm devices, such as powerful Android gaming handhelds, even though the Frame itself runs a modified version of the Linux-based SteamOS. Nonetheless, this change is a significant stepping stone for anyone wanting to play games beyond traditional Android-only titles, as mobile hardware has been capable of running powerful configurations for some time now.

After launching the Snapdragon X2 Elite and X2 Plus series of processors for Windows-on-Arm, Qualcomm is now bringing first-class support for these SoCs to Linux as well. According to the company, the internal developer team has been working to integrate full SoC support into the Linux kernel for the Snapdragon X2 series of hardware. Currently, the developer team is focusing on supporting the X2 SoC in traditional laptop configurations rather than desktop mini PCs. Initial enablement includes support for Hexagon NPU, Adreno GPU, and, of course, the CPU cluster that underpins the entire SoC. Modern browser acceleration, graphics, I/O peripherals, display output, and AI acceleration for local inferencing have been added. The support now also includes proper power and thermal control, as well as the reliability and endurance of the SoC under load.

Qualcomm is pushing all of this hardware enablement upstream to the Linux kernel and has also collaborated with the Debian operating system to get the latest image working. Basic workloads will now run out of the box, while the company continues testing for any gaps and other areas that need focus for enablement. More peripherals are being added to work with these SoCs, and edge cases like power spikes during workloads will be addressed in the long-term enablement, as Qualcomm continues to push these changes upstream. This work in progress is expected to finish in November this year, after which Qualcomm plans to continue adding more OEMs to the Snapdragon X2 bandwagon and potentially bring these PCs with a Linux-based OS pre-installed.

NVIDIA has rolled out RTX Kit 2026.3 alongside version 2.0 of its RTX Mega Geometry SDK, giving game developers a fresh batch of neural rendering and path tracing tools. The headline feature is support for streaming continuous level-of-detail clusters for high-density meshes, shown off in a new textured glTF version of the Zorah demo. The rest of the RTX Kit update covers RTX Character Rendering 1.4, RTX Dynamic Illumination 3.1 with DLSS Ray Reconstruction integration, RTX Neural Shading 1.4, and RTX Texture Filtering 1.3, which adds Collaborative Texture Filtering.

RTX Neural Texture Compression 0.10 is still in beta, but it now supports the DirectX 12 Agility SDK preview with Linear Algebra, letting Tensor Cores accelerate neural texture decompression in DirectX shaders. It and RTX Texture Filtering 1.3 also gain Windows ARM64 support, which seems to be groundwork for the RTX Spark PCs NVIDIA says start shipping in October. NTC was already running on Windows on Arm back in August.

MSI IPC introduces the MS-C9ZA, a compact fanless Edge AI Box PC powered by NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano 8 GB for machine vision, robotics, and embedded edge AI applications. It integrates local AI inference, industrial I/O, dual Gigabit Ethernet, M.2 expansion, and 12-24 V DC input.

Powered by a 6-core Arm Cortex -A78AE CPU, NVIDIA Ampere GPU, and 8 GB LPDDR5 memory, the MS-C9ZA enables AI inference and computer vision processing at the edge, helping reduce cloud dependency, bandwidth usage, and network latency.