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.

Qualcomm has officially validated its High Bandwidth Compute (HBC) concept, which the company showcased this summer. Instead of using traditional HBM and compute dies, Qualcomm has developed a technology that stacks multiple LPDDR layers and embeds a base die that serves as a compute engine for AI inference. In Qualcomm's San Diego lab, the first-generation HBC has achieved silicon validation with full read-write and near-memory computation capabilities. HBC utilizes LPDDR memory, stacking it across multiple layers in a 3D vertical space and interconnecting them with through-silicon vias (TSVs). This approach provides better energy efficiency than traditional HBM, which stacks regular DDR in vertical layers, as the low-power DDR (LPDDR) chips consume less power while delivering similar bandwidth and capacity.

Qualcomm has successfully stacked multiple LPDDR layers on top of each other, with the base of the HBC being a compute die that performs near-memory computation and offloads processing to near-memory dies. This technique is similar to what HBM4 memory currently does, with the base die being a logic die to better integrate compute solutions for packet tracing and data preparation for entering and exiting HBM. However, Qualcomm aims to achieve higher efficiency and more optimized data movement, with a 6x increase in bandwidth per watt compared to the current HBM specification. The goal is to have compute directly under these memory stacks so that data travels only a few microns instead of a few centimeters.

YMTC, known as a NAND Flash manufacturer, is reportedly preparing to start mass production of LPDDR5X memory. While it has been known for some time that YMTC plans to enter DRAM production alongside its main NAND Flash business, it was not widely known that the company had already begun low-scale manufacturing. According to Counterpoint Research, YMTC has been producing about 5,000 wafers per month of 16 Gb LPDDR5X DRAM running at 7,500 MT/s at its Fab 2 since October 2025. The company is now preparing to begin volume production of LPDDR5X memory with speeds of 9,600 MT/s at its Fab 3, using Vertical Channel Transistor (VCT) 4F² cell structure technology.

YMTC has a significant advantage with 3D silicon, which represents the next phase of memory evolution. With its Xtacking 4.0 technology, YMTC can separate memory cell wafers from peripheral logic circuits and combine them using hybrid bonding wafer-to-wafer stacking. Hybrid bonding creates a permanent bond between two silicon chips using embedded metal bumps that are fused together to form a single chip. Multiple dies or entire silicon wafers can be connected by stacking the back ends of two chips together.

Xiaomi has officially spilled the beans on the 2027 update to its Redmi Book laptop series, detailing both a launch date and what to expect from the laptops in terms of performance and battery life. The information comes courtesy of the Xiaomi Redmi account on Weibo, and the announcement reveals an October 27 release date for the Redmi Book 14 and likely the 16, alongside it. It's so far unclear if and when the new Redmi Book laptops will launch internationally or what the pricing will be, but the outgoing Redmi Book 14 starts at 6,499 CNY with 16 GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage.

With the post, Xiaomi also confirms that the Redmi Book 14 and 16 will be using Intel's Wildcat Lake Core Series 3 processors, with previous leaks having tipped the Core 5 320 for the Redmi Book 16, and the fine print on the marketing images now confirming the Core 5 320 for the Redmi Book 14. The Redmi Book 14 2027 has also been confirmed to ship with a 72 Wh battery, which Xiaomi claims will deliver over 20 hours of office use, with a claimed 1.26 days of local video playback. It will also use LPDDR5X-7467 RAM, although capacities are unclear at the time of writing, aside from the confirmation that there will be a 16 GB version available. The fine print also confirms that the display will be 2.8K, however the panel tech isn't mentioned.

MINISFORUM today announced the S5, a fanless 5-bay all-flash Agent NAS. Powered by the Intel Core 3 304 processor, the S5 features 5 cores and a maximum clock speed of 4.3 GHz. It supports five M.2 NVMe SSDs for up to 40 TB of storage and is equipped with one 10GbE and one 2.5GbE LAN port with Wi-Fi and dual USB4 ports with speeds of up to 40 Gbps. By combining all-flash storage with fanless passive cooling, the S5 brings high-speed storage, quiet operation and low power consumption together in a compact chassis. It also supports an edge-cloud collaborative Agent architecture for always-on local Agent execution.

Compared with traditional HDDs, the S5 delivers up to 6x faster sequential read speeds and up to 100x faster random read speeds. For 4K/8K video projects, RAW photo libraries and large creative assets, higher read performance helps reduce waiting time when importing, browsing and accessing files. All-flash storage is also well suited to creative workflows that require frequent access to large project files.

The ever-growing list of mini PCs powered by AMD's Gorgon Halo APUs has just received its latest addition in the TOPC TXA2, a new workstation built around AMD's Ryzen AI Max+ Pro 495 APU and its powerful Radeon 8065S iGPU. The TOPC TXA2 is available in two configurations, with either 2 TB of storage for $6,399 or 4 TB of storage for $6,699 on TOPC's online store—even though the price is high, it's still a solid $900 cheaper than AMD's in-house Ryzen AI Halo Developer platform.

The TXA2 also packs 192 GB of LPDDR5X-8533 unified memory, with up to 160 GB shared with the iGPU for workstation use. Despite the 180 ×180 × 78 mm, or ~2.5 L chassis, TOPC claims that the TXA2 is capable of a 120 W TDP. It's also no slouch in the I/O department, with Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 for wireless networking and connectivity, and it has a healthy port selection, to boot.

AMD's upcoming EPYC "Verano" processors will apparently use a new socket called SB1. The name comes from server cooler maker Dynatron, which now states on its website that its cooling solutions support "AMD EPYC Verano on Socket SB1." Dynatron also has a product page up for a 4U active cooler listed as "SB1-4U-ACTIVE (TBD)," so the final product name is still pending. The "B" in SB1 could point to a BGA package soldered to the board, although that is a guess based on the name and nothing official. The listing doesn't help much either. Maximum power is marked as TBD, and the 128.05 x 106.6 x 130.7 mm dimensions are identical to Dynatron's J26 cooler for SP7, so the specs could simply be placeholders for now.

Verano is the codename for the EPYC 9006 LP, a Zen 6 part that AMD announced alongside the rest of its 6th Gen EPYC lineup. It tops out at 72 cores with boost clocks of up to 5 GHz, and it runs on 24 channels of LPDDR5X memory through replaceable SOCAMM2 modules. AMD is aiming it at AI racks as a host processor for GPU clusters, with a launch planned for the second half of 2027. The regular "Venice" chips use different sockets, namely SP7 for up to 256 cores and SP8 for up to 128. For "Verano," AMD itself hasn't revealed the socket name yet.

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

After teasing the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ Pro 495 upgrade to the Framework Destkop mini PC, Framework has officially announced that pre-orders for the SFF desktop will start on Wednesday, 30 September. The announcement came in a post on the OEM's official X account, where it also confirmed that, as is typical with its Framework Laptop upgrades, the rest of the motherboard and case will remain the same, for backwards compatibility purposes.

Currently, it is unclear how much the new AMD Ryzen AI Max+ Pro 495-powered mini PC will cost, but it'd be a safe bet to assume it will be more expensive than the current-generation Ryzen AI Max+ 395 model, especially on the high-end version, topping out at 192 GB of LPDDR5X-8533 memory where the 395 version tops out at 128 GB.

Honor, the smartphone and computer company formerly owned by Huawei, has officially revealed the Tiangong AXB35, a new AI workstation platform that designed for enterprise use and made to run on a choice of AMD, Intel, or NVIDIA hardware in a tiny SFF desktop chassis measuring just 70 × 192 × 203 mm, or around 2 L volume. Honor says that the Tiangong SFF PC is designed for everything from high-level office work and local knowledge bases, AI inference workloads, and agentic applications, but it would also be useful as a raw computational workstation for everything from 3D modelling and creative tasks to developing, and even gaming.

The Tiangong AXB35 comes in three variants: Standard, Pro, and Ultra, The Standard AXB35 comes equipped with Intel's Core Ultra X7 358H CPU, which features the new Intel Arc B390 iGPU, a total of 16 cores (4× P-Cores, 12× E-Cores, 4× LP E-Cores), and support for up to 96 GB of memory. The Pro version comes with AMD's 16-core Ryzen AI Max+ 395, packing the Radeon 8060S iGPU and up to 128 GB of LPDDR5X memory on a wide 256 GB/s bus. Meanwhile, the Ultra version comes with NVIDIA's new RTX Spark platform, based on the Arm architecture.

Google will open pre-orders for its first Googlebook laptops on September 21 at 9 AM ET. The company confirmed the date in an email to people who signed up for updates, and the same date now appears on Google's official Googlebook website. That's the first firm date tied to the product since Google teased a fall launch back in May. Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, and Lenovo are all lined up as first-wave Googlebook manufacturers, and several of their machines have already leaked ahead of launch.

The Lenovo Googlebook 15 is probably the most exposed so far, reportedly pairing an Intel Core Ultra 5 325 "Panther Lake" chip with up to 32 GB of LPDDR5X memory, a 15.3-inch 120 Hz OLED touchscreen, and Google's colorful Glowbar light strip. That same Core Ultra 5 325 keeps showing up across leaked Acer and ASUS models too, which is a change from how Chromebooks have typically launched with entry-level Intel silicon. Google still hasn't said which models will actually be available on September 21, and it hasn't shared a shipping date either, only that units will arrive this fall.

Valve has opened reservations for the Steam Frame, its standalone VR headset, with pricing starting at $1,059 for the 256 GB model and going up to $1,299 for the 1 TB version. We had already reported back in July that Qualcomm's own chip price hikes were pushing Steam Frame costs upward well before today's reveal. In an interview with Tom's Hardware, Valve engineer Pierre-Loup Griffais walked through why the final price landed where it did. Here's what he said:

"I think as far as memory prices and those kinds of conditions, we're really in it like everyone else. It's an unfortunate situation all around. We wish that gaming hardware was cheaper, but we're definitely trying to be on the cheapest side that we can get despite all those conditions. Even just things like motherboards, copper, anything, even shipping anything worldwide right now is way more expensive than it was last year and two years ago. So every part of the sticker price is affected there."

Intel's next-generation Nova Lake mobile chips with 12 Xe-core graphics may support DDR5-8000 memory through CSODIMM modules, according to leaker Golden Pig Upgrade Pack on Weibo. If that pans out, it would be the first mobile Nova Lake variant to officially support DDR5, a notable departure from the soldered LPDDR memory that dominates thin-and-light laptops right now. Current Panther Lake systems with 12 Xe cores, like the Core Ultra X7 358H, don't officially list DDR5 support, though ASRock Industrial already ships mini PCs with two DDR5 SO-DIMM slots running at DDR5-7200 on that platform, and Intel itself includes this configuration among its Core Ultra Series 3 developer systems.

Nova Lake-S, the desktop version, has already been tied to DDR5-8000 through leaked B960 chipset details and platform documents, so Intel appears to be pushing that same memory ceiling down into at least part of the mobile lineup too. Unlike soldered LPDDR5X, CSODIMM support would let OEMs offer upgradable RAM again in these systems, an option that's grown rare in slimmer laptop designs built around battery life and board space. Despite the leaker's solid track record, this is still a single leak rather than anything Intel has confirmed, so I'd hold off treating the exact speeds as final. If it checks out, it suggests Intel is willing to give at least some mobile Nova Lake configurations more memory flexibility, even as most of the market keeps drifting toward soldered memory for efficiency.

SK hynix is shifting much of its capacity to the latest 1c DRAM node, according to recent reports. The South Korean giant is transitioning the bulk of its memory production between nodes, and as DRAM technology advances, the company is moving its production to more advanced 10 nm-class nodes. For SK hynix, the sixth-generation 10 nm class 1c DRAM node accounted for 10% of production in Q1 2026, with an increase to about 13% in Q2. In the current third quarter, the company is expected to manufacture 24% of its DRAM on 1c, while Q4 will see more than a third (34%) produced on that node. By Q1 2027, the 1c node will account for around 35%, making the fifth-generation 10 nm-class 1b node at 33%, officially SK hynix's most dominant node.

As a reminder, DRAM nodes are not the same as conventional logic nodes. DRAM manufacturers use variations of 10 nm and scale them with more EUV layers or advanced features. For SK hynix, the currently dominant 1b node is around 12-13 nm in actual design and involves about 4 layers of EUV patterning, while the most advanced 1c node shrinks to 11-12 nm with 5-6 layers of EUV. SK hynix will use the 1c node to manufacture HBM4E, LPDDR6, and DDR5 memory. For the older 1b node, SK hynix produces DDR5, LPDDR5X, HBM3E, and HBM4.

TrendForce's latest findings on the memory industry reveal that sharp rises in traditional DRAM contract prices have led to a 59.5% QoQ increase in total DRAM industry revenue, reaching nearly US$154.73 billion in 2Q26.

Growing demand for AI servers, fueled by expanding LLM training and AI inference, has driven higher shipments of HBM3e, LPDDR5X, and high-capacity RDIMMS. The surge in agentic AI applications is further boosting RDIMM demand across various capacities.

At IFA 2026 in Berlin, we visited the ADATA booth to see what the company has in store. To many, the surprising factor is the introduction of the relatively new "TRUSTA" brand by ADATA, which focuses on enterprise and industrial product offerings, a departure from what traditional PC enthusiasts know about ADATA. First, we explored the TRUSTA brand to see what the company offers. This includes the T7P5 SSDs, which boast read speeds of 13.5 GB/s and write speeds of 10.3 GB/s, and come in capacities ranging from 1.6 TB to 7.68 TB. All of this is powered by 3D NAND Flash using eTLC architecture, with the SSD form factors including U.2, E1.S, and E3.S versions, all carrying the same PCIe Gen 5 x4 interface, just with different twists depending on server or workstation needs.

We're on the ground at IFA in Berlin this week, and one of the more interesting machines we walked past on the show floor was the Acer Swift Blade 14. It's a new sub-brand under Acer's Swift lineup, and the first thing you notice picking it up is just how little of it there is to hold. Acer built the Swift Blade 14 to weigh just 799 grams (1.76 pounds), making it one of the lightest 14-inch Windows laptops we've come across. The chassis pairs carbon fiber on the top and bottom covers with a magnesium-aluminum alloy keyboard deck, keeping the weight down without the machine feeling flimsy in hand. It measures 12.9mm thin on the base configuration and 13.5mm on OLED models. That's not quite as thin as a 13-inch MacBook Air, but it is significantly lighter.

Inside, the laptop runs on Intel's Wildcat Lake platform, scaling up to a Core 7 350 CPU alongside 12GB of onboard LPDDR5-6400 memory and up to 1TB of PCIe Gen 4 NVMe storage. The display comes in three tiers, topping out at a 3K OLED WQXGA+ panel running at 90Hz with 400 nits and full DCI-P3 coverage, packed into a 90% screen-to-body ratio with 4.3mm bezels. A 50Wh battery, three USB Type-C ports, Wi-Fi 6, and Bluetooth 5.3 round out the spec sheet. Of course, thermal performance will be a concern in a chassis this thin, so we'll have to wait for independent testing to comment on that. Acer confirmed the Swift Blade 14 launches across EMEA in December, though pricing hasn't been announced yet.

Minisforum is apparently continuing its ongoing attempt to flood the mini PC market with as many models as possible, with the M2 Pro being the latest entry into its Intel Panther Lake-powered mini PC line-up. The Minisforum M2 Pro packs Intel's latest Core Ultra X7 358H, with its powerful Arc B390 iGPU in tow, into an aluminium chassis measuring just 195 × 195 × 47.5 mm, or 1.8 L. Minisforum claims that the Intel Core X7 Ultra CPU inside the M2 Pro can sustain TDP of up to 65 W thanks to a dual heat pipe cooling solution and a flow-through cooling design.

Minisforum seems to also be positioning the M2 Pro as something of a do-it-all machine, since it features built-in HDMI CEC, making it a solid, if somewhat expensive HTPC and living room console. The Minisforum M2 Pro also packs a 134.9 W PSU into the tiny chassis, meaning there is no need to hide a power brick behind a TV console or on a desk. The M2 Pro only comes in one variant, with the Intel Core Ultra X7 358H, 32 GB of LPDDR5X-7467 memory, and a 1 TB NVMe SSD, all for an MSRP of $1,799, with a launch discount bringing that down to $1,439. At that price, it's certainly not cheap, but it also has an impressive specs and features list to back up that price, including upgradeable and expandable storage and triple USB4 ports.

GPD's Win Max 3 gaming handheld was shown off in June 2026 running AMD's Strix Halo Ryzen AI Max+ 395, a 165 Hz AMOLED display, and a modular battery. GPD has now officially announced the upcoming launch date for the Indiegogo campaign to get the new Strix Halo handheld off the ground, alongside the price at which the device will launch on the crowdfunding platform.

At launch, there will be three variants of the GPD Win Max 3, with the entry-level model with an AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 388 CPU, 32 GB of RAM, and a 1 TB SSD launching at $1,750, while stepping up to 64 GB of RAM and 2 TB of storage on the same APU will bring the price up to $2,246. The most expensive version of the Win Max 3 will have the full-fat AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 APU with 128 GB of RAM and 2 TB of storage for a whopping $3,499 MSRP.

Intel's "Razor Lake-AX" SoCs are getting closer to being released, as we have received further confirmation that Intel is actively working on these chips for the public. In the latest HWiNFO update, the tool's creators announced preliminary support for Intel's "Razor Lake-AX" chip, with full preliminary support expected in the next version, v8.51, of HWiNFO. This will be Intel's first competitor to AMD's existing "Halo" series of APUs, which feature a large integrated GPU alongside a substantial CPU complex. Earlier reports indicated that the "Razor Lake-AX" iGPU will come in two versions: one with a 16-core iGPU and a flagship SKU with a 32-core iGPU.

Both of these integrated graphics solutions are expected to be based on Intel's Xe3 graphics IP, currently found in "Panther Lake." This would make "Razor Lake-AX" nearly three times as powerful as the current Arc B390, which powers Intel's PTL lineup. This suggests that "Razor Lake-AX" will be a large package, as the GPU die is reportedly around 162.84 mm². We also learned that Intel plans to return to on-package memory with the upcoming "AX" chip. Although the company initially stated that the Core Ultra 200V "Lunar Lake" was the last design with on-package memory, Intel is reportedly bringing back on-package LPDDR5X/LPDDR6 memory for "Razor Lake-AX." Do note that the image below is not a real Intel slide.

Samsung Electronics a global leader in advanced memory technology, today showcased its latest AI memory innovations at Future of Memory and Storage (FMS) 2026 in Santa Clara, California.

With broad expertise spanning DRAM, NAND, enterprise storage and relevant advanced semiconductor technologies, Samsung presented its latest AI memory portfolio and technology roadmap, including a preview of its zHBM and zNAND-O concept models, the industry-first introduction of its V10 BV-NAND with 400-plus layers and a comprehensive range of solutions designed to advance future AI infrastructure. Samsung is also featuring its AI cloud server-inspired booth at FMS 2026, where approximately 30 memory and storage technologies are on display.

We have seen numerous reports about Chinese memory giant CXMT and its production. The company has now reportedly entered risk production of the latest LPDDR6 memory, reaching parity with Samsung, SK hynix, and Micron in both manufacturing and technological evolution. According to multiple reports, CXMT's LPDDR6 memory will operate at speeds of up to 12.8 Gbps, with the base speed of LPDDR6 being 10.7 Gbps. LPDDR6 picks up where LPDDR5X left off, which could reach speeds of up to 10.7 Gbps when highly overclocked. However, the newest standard is pushing for much higher speeds, with the first generation of LPDDR6 from CXMT's fabs reaching 12.8 Gbps. Additionally, CXMT is producing these chips with a 16 Gb capacity, equivalent to 2 GB, and the memory IC is placed inside a package-on-package (POP) casing, featuring about 1,295 pins in a ball grid array.

For now, this production will be only a trial run before high-volume manufacturing (HVM), which will likely take place weeks or even months after the initial risk production. Currently, the company is shipping its LPDDR6 to customers for validation, suggesting that we will likely see full risk production soon. As CXMT has manufacturing, construction, and other factors far ahead of industry standards, it is possible that HVM will occur in just a few weeks.

Colorful Technology Company Limited, a leading brand in gaming PC components, gaming laptops, and Hi-fi audio products, proudly announces the COLORFUL Rimbook L1 Plus, powered by an AMD Ryzen processor. Designed for students, professionals, creators, and everyday users, the Rimbook L1 Plus combines powerful computing performance, a lightweight premium design, and a vibrant high-resolution display in an ultra-portable package.

Powered by the AMD Ryzen 7 7735HS Processor featuring 8 cores, 16 threads, and boost speeds of up to 4.75 GHz, the Rimbook L1 Plus delivers the performance needed for demanding productivity, multitasking, content creation, and entertainment. Weighing only 1.4 kg and measuring just 16.65 mm thin, the laptop features a refined matte metal top cover that offers a premium look and feel while remaining easy to carry for users on the go.

The complexity of modern chip design continues to grow as engineering teams work to develop increasingly sophisticated CPUs, GPUs and AI systems. To help meet that challenge, NVIDIA is collaborating with industry leaders Cadence and Synopsys to optimize critical electronic design automation (EDA) applications for the NVIDIA Vera CPU. NVIDIA is now deploying Vera across EDA workflows used to develop its next generation of CPUs and GPUs, demonstrating how high-performance CPU architecture can help accelerate some of the industry's most demanding engineering workloads.

Accelerating Critical EDA Workloads
What's at stake is the pace of chip production. In turn, the tempo of industry technologies that stand to benefit from boosted EDA workloads, driving development momentum. Simulation, verification and implementation technologies play a central role in semiconductor development. Long before a chip reaches manufacturing, engineers spend years validating behavior, identifying corner cases and refining designs through thousands of iterations. While GPUs and AI have accelerated many aspects of chip design, several critical EDA workloads remain heavily dependent on CPU performance. Logic simulation, formal verification and portions of digital implementation often depend on fast individual cores, efficient memory systems and strong overall throughput. That makes CPU architecture an important factor in determining how quickly engineering teams can validate designs, explore alternatives and move products toward tapeout.

NVIDIA has released a developer preview of GeForce drivers for its RTX Spark PC platform, confirming the variants of the N1X chip and the SKU separation that will occur. In GeForce driver version 616.00, this marks the company's first driver package compiled for the Windows-on-Arm (WoA) platform. Thanks to Windows Latest, which extracted the installation file and examined the information file, it appears there are two main RTX Spark N1X chip SKUs: one with 6,144 CUDA cores and another with 5,120 CUDA cores. Both are based on the "Blackwell" GPU microarchitecture and are paired with a 20-core Arm CPU and up to 128 GB of LPDDR5X memory.

NVIDIA is working with Microsoft to optimize Windows 11, and developers now have access to the optimization techniques needed to get their AAA titles, productivity software, and other applications ported and optimized for running on NVIDIA's latest platform. A few days ago, we noted that NVIDIA is rolling out the CUDA toolkit for its RTX Spark platform, specifically as a native Windows-on-Arm software toolkit, and this driver version 616.00 is part of that toolkit.