Bitspower has a curious demo setup tucked in a corner of its Las Vegas suite. A cuboid CPU cooler—featuring three LCD screens—sits atop a dummy ATX-shaped motherboard. PC builders have become accustomed to the presence of single screens on various types of modern central processor cooling solutions. In stark contrast, Bitspower has opted into prepping an unusual triple-panel array that is hooked up to a nearby tablet. A proprietary application allows users to select picture, GIF or video content and adjust displayed diagnostic information. The tablet was also put in charge of controlling ARGB lighting systems present on connected fans.

Considering the size of the block mounted onto the plastic board, initial inspectors would conclude that Bitspower's engineering team had created some sort of air-cooled tower. The absence of fans and a dense matrix fin array indicates an alternative method; perhaps not passive. TechPowerUp lifted up the demonstration block and found part of a liquid cooling pump fixed onto the pretend CPU socket. Most of Bitspower's prototype seems to be made of dark gray plastic, and simply serves as a set of surfaces to affix LCD screens onto. Amusingly, the dummy mainboard sports four mock sticks of RAM—a wishful provision given current market conditions!

The 8K Association was at the NAB 2025 Show with several areas of interest. At one end of the booth, there was a demonstration of real time gaming using an AMD-based gaming PC and a special 65" TV flown in from Korea by 8K Association member, Samsung, that supported 120 FPS display. The game was Horizon Forbidden West and the TV was a modified Neo QLED 8K display set enabled with the following features: Auto Low Latency Mode (ALLM), Variable Refresh Rate (VRR), and FreeSync Premium Pro. The PC was from MAINGEAR and used an AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D CPU and an AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT GPU. The game supports the Steam platform which allows analytics to be shown and confirming the 120 Hz operation. The game was rendered at 5K and was then internally upscaled using AMD ML-based FidelityFX Super Resolution 3 technology.

The signal was sent to the TV using HDMI 2.1b with DSC support and the impressive smooth visuals attracted a lot of attention from visitors, especially those that were already aware of the game, which is visually very impressive. In the center of the booth was the latest 8KA "sizzle reel" which includes video provided by member company Imax featuring some impressive content scanned from its 70 mm film stock. BZBGear, another 8KA member was showing its range of switches, splitters and HDBaseT transmitters and receivers which all support 8K.

Intel's Vision 2025 conference ended yesterday—since then, media outlets have spent time poring over a multitude of announcements made during the two-day Las Vegas, Nevada event. Notably, Team Blue leadership confirmed that their Core Ultra 300 "Panther Lake" processor series is built to scale (on) 18A, and is on track for production later this year." Prominently-displayed presentation material indicated a roadmapped 2026 launch of "Panther Lake" client chips. The success of this next-gen mobile processor family is intertwined with Intel's Foundry service making marked progress. As summarized by the company's social media account, production teams are celebrating another milestone: "Intel 18A has entered risk production. This final stage is about stress-testing volume manufacturing before scaling up to high volume in the second half of 2025."

Under Pat Gelsinger's command, Team Blue set off on a "five nodes in four years" (5N4Y) adventure around mid-2021. This plan is set to conclude with the finalization of 18A, at some point this year, under a newly refreshed regime—with Lip-Bu Tan recently established as CEO. During an on-stage Intel Vision 2025 session, Kevin O'Buckley—Senior VP of Foundry Services—explained the meaning of: "risk production, while it sounds scary, is actually an industry standard terminology, and the importance of risk production is we've gotten the technology to a point where we're freezing it...Our customers have validated that; 'Yep, 18A is good enough for my product.' And we have to now do the 'risk' part, which is to scale it from making hundreds of units per day to thousands, tens of thousands, and then hundreds of thousands. So risk production..is scaling our manufacturing up and ensuring that we can meet not just the capabilities of the technology, but the capabilities at scale." By original "5N4Y" decree, top brass demanded that process nodes be (fully) available for production, rather than be stuck in a (not quite there) final high volume manufacturing (HVM) phase.

Intel's freshly concluded Vision 2025 "Products Update and GTM" showcase included a segment dedicated to forthcoming Core Ultra 300 "Panther Lake" client processors. Industry watchdogs have grabbed a select few screenshots from Team Blue's broadcast from Las Vegas, Nevada—one backdropped slide confirms that Intel's next-generation mobile CPU series will launch in 2026. This information mirrors the company's Chinese office presenting of an AI PC roadmap—coverage of last month's event highlighted a scheduled first quarter 2026 "volume" arrival of "Core Ultra Next-gen Panther Lake (18A)."

Going back to early March, Intel leadership refuted online rumors of "Panther Lake" mobile CPUs being delayed into 2026, due to alleged problems encountered during the development of the Foundry service's 18A process node. An interviewed executive repeatedly insisted that his firm's brand-new series was on track for release within the second half of 2025. Fast-forward to the end of last week; Lip-Bu Tan expressed a similar outlook in a letter addressed to investors. The newly-established boss stated: "we will further enhance our (leadership) position in the second half of this year with the launch of Panther Lake, our lead product on Intel 18A, followed by Nova Lake in 2026." Industry insiders propose that the Core Ultra 300 series will become available in a very limited capacity come October, via an Early Enablement Program (EEP). Returning to this week—Jim Johnson, senior vice president of the firm's Client Computing Group, informed a watchful audience about the merits of his group's design: "I'm personally excited about Panther Lake because it combines the power efficiency of Lunar Lake, the performance of Arrow Lake, and is built to scale 18A and is on track for production later this year...Our client roadmap is the most innovative we've ever had, and we are far from done."

Elon Musk has formed a new AI-focused company, as reported by the Wall Street Journal yesterday. The entity registered under the name X.AI was incorporated via a filing in Nevada last month, and Musk appears to be listed as the company's only director with Jared Birchall joining him under the role of secretary. Birchall heads the Musk family office, Excession LLC, and he serves as CEO of Neuralink - a neurotechnology company that was co-founded by Musk back in 2016. It is widely speculated that Birchall serves as a type of fixer - go watch the TV series "Ray Donovan" if you would like to observe a crude (and obviously fictional) example - in corporate affairs.

Reports emerged earlier this week, with Musk being at the forefront of a massive purchase of GPUs destined to arrive shortly at his data centers - this impressive chunk of hardware is speculated to power AI-related number crunching at Twitter in the near future. The founding of X.AI could provide another home for a portion of the 10,000 GPU order, but industry insiders firmly believe that Twitter will need to tool up quickly for its new AI-driven endeavor - the GPUs will likely be set to work on a ChatBot system to underpin the social media platform. Musk has already recruited researchers from DeepMind and setup a lab for them at one of his operations. It remains to be seen how the X.AI startup will run alongside efforts at other Musk-owned companies - it is theorized that he wants to beat OpenAI at their own game, and compete with similar undertakings at Google, Microsoft and Amazon.