Autodesk has unveiled enhancements to its AECO portfolio, introducing scan-to-mesh technology aimed at promoting sustainable building practices in Australia. Read...

MediaTek launched the Kompanio Ultra as the company’s premium Chromebook processor on Wednesday, predicting that it will easily offer the highest Minecraft performance of any Chromebook chip while bringing AI to the platform, too. Essentially, MediaTek launched the Kompanio Ultra to help answer the question: Which Chromebook should I buy? Besides Google’s own Chromebook Plus brand, there aren’t too many answers. Instead, the list of Chromebooks is a hodgepodge of various processors, including the Intel Celeron, Pentium, and Core processors; AMD’s A-series and Ryzen chips, and Arm processors like the Qualcomm Snapdragon and the existing MediaTek Kompanio 500 and 800 series. Google launched the Chromebook Plus specification to help clarify matters, but it certainly doesn’t help to differentiate the performance each chip can offer. MediaTek isn’t that well known, either. All of that sparked the need for a MediaTek “Ultra” brand, said Adam King, the vice president and general manager of computing and multimedia business for MediaTek, in a conference call with reporters. Around 2021, MediaTek tried the Kompanio 1000 chip, which fizzled. “We decided, if we were going to try again, we would,” King said. “We wouldn’t hold anything back. We would put the absolute best that we could out there, even knowing that it might not necessarily drive tremendous volume.” What’s in the MediaTek Kompanio Ultra? The Kompanio Ultra is an 8-core Arm CPU, on a 3nm process technology. It’s based upon a single Arm Cortex 3.62GHz X925 ultraperformance core, along with three Arm Cortex X4 performance cores and four Arm Cortex A720 efficiency cores. Those cores are paired with an 11-core Immortalis-G925 GPU that can perform ray tracing and output to three 4K displays at 60Hz while performing 10-bit 4K60 video encoding and decoding using the HEVC/AVC codecs. It uses an undisclosed amount of LPDDR5X memory. The chip supports Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6.0. MediaTek More importantly, the Ultra chip includes an NPU capable of 50 TOPS, leaving it able to perform whatever NPU-centric functions a Chromebook can throw at it. AI capabilities have pretty much ignored the Chromebook entirely, save for Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processors. Executives claimed that the Kompanio Ultra 910, the first chip in MediaTek’s new product class, could easily outperform Intel’s leader, Intel Core Ultra 5 115U and 125U, in the Chromebook space. The Ultra offers 18 percent faster single-thread performance and 40 percent more multi-thread performance, respectively. More importantly, the Ultra 910 can deliver 250 percent the frame rate of the 125U while playing Minecraft, MediaTek executives said, a key metric for elementary-school age kids. If you’re looking for the best Minecraft or Roblox Chromebook for your kids, you might want one with a Kompanio Ultra chip inside it. Users don’t need to trade off performance for battery life, either; MediaTek claims that the chip will deliver 20 hours of battery life on a 60Wh battery. Are Kompanio PCs coming? In fact, if there’s one area that’s been ignored within Chromebooks, it’s AI. King said that it’s likely that Google will address this in its May event, Google I/O. (Could Google announce a Chromebook Ultra then?) MediaTek executives said that the Kompanio Ultra won’t appear in Windows on Arm PCs, however, nor on tablets. So while we still expect MediaTek to eventually challenge Qualcomm in PCs, that will have to wait for another day…although that day doesn’t appear that far off, either. Read...

By now, you’ve heard of the U.S.’s decision to levy tariffs on imports—all goods made in China, as well as select materials worldwide, like steel and aluminum. At the time of this article’s publishing, taxes on products coming from Canada and Mexico also were likely to begin early April, with additional tariffs proposed for more materials and products worldwide. I covered the details about these tariffs in a FAQ, as well as a set of highlights for a shorter way to get up to speed on the situation. I also created a breakout of sample cost increases so you could better see what actual purchases could look like. But most news has focused on the immediate dollars-and-cents effect of these new taxes. What’s been talked about less are the other ways tariffs will impact the tech industry—consequences that could dampen or even drive back certain aspects that we currently take for granted. At best, we’ll see a temporary blow. At worst, we could feel this hit for years to come. Harder to obtain Technology has become more available to the masses over time. Long ago, personal computers were a rare luxury, found only in homes of enthusiasts or the well-to-do. But as popularity rose, devices and hardware became easier to get. People wanted to spend their money on fresh gear—and so supply became more plentiful. Remember when EVGA made graphics cards? Yeah, they don’t any longer, after looking at the cost of that part of their business. Let’s hope the tariffs don’t cause other companies to make similar moves within tech.Brad Chacos / Foundry But when prices go up, demand goes down. Companies already have an incentive to slow the rollout of new products due to the economic instability brought about by the tariffs. If you add on a weakened appetite from consumers for discretionary purchases, vendors have reason to pull back on the production. They may become slower to release successors to products or even a wider variety of products. In particular, smaller companies decide to pause or stop product lines.  Industry insiders expressed this very sentiment to me when discussing the tariffs and their effect. Without the ability to make accurate forecasts, businesses have to proceed with more caution. They’ll either produce less of their usual devices or hardware—or opt out of selling certain items altogether. After years of ever-growing options for consumers, shrinking down to fewer choices will be a sad step backward. Price stagnation (or even increases) Intel’s Kaby Lake Core i7-7700X launched just a couple of months before AMD’s first-generation Ryzen CPUs, sporting a 4-core, 8-thread processor. By fall, its Coffee Lake Core i7-8700K successor had added two more cores and four more threads. Competition makes a difference.Adam Patrick Murray / Foundry Innovation and competition help lower costs for technology. Manufacturing becomes more efficient, growing demand spreads production costs over a wider field, and/or the tech is succeeded by something even fresher. But if tech gear becomes less varied and harder to get, those factors won’t be as dependable as an influence on price. How much you’ll pay for a laptop, phone, or piece of hardware will likely stick where it is—or go up. As my colleague Gordon Mah Ung loved to point out, Intel sold consumers 4-core, 8-thread CPUs for years, always at similar MSRPs. And when Team Blue launched its first 10-core processor, the suggested price was a staggering $1,723. Fast forward a year, after AMD released its first generation of Ryzen chips, and Intel’s top consumer chip had inched up in core count, with the $359 Intel Core i7-8700K sporting 6 cores and 12 threads. Its closest rivals? The $329 Ryzen 7 1700 and $399 Ryzen 7 1700X, both of which sported 8 cores and 16 threads. This history lesson shows that consumers get less value when fewer options exist. Companies can charge whatever they want when faced with less pressure to keep pushing the envelope. Slower release of new products Should early adopters become more reluctant to try out new gadgets, companies could stop trying novel new form factors, like this tri-fold smartphone.Luke Baker If you’re a company facing economic uncertainty, how much would you want to invest in different products? Likewise, if you’re a consumer looking at devices with fewer or smaller upgrades that cost as much as the previous model, will you want to buy anything new? It’s a bit of a standoff, and one that the tariffs could spark. For example, let’s say you’re used to buying a replacement phone every two years. But if the features don’t change dramatically, and prices remain high (especially for flagship models), perhaps you’ll stick to what you’ve already got in your pocket. Companies might then not push novel form factors as hard, like tri-fold phones and other variants. Similarly, Nvidia and AMD could continue to delay their attention to budget gamers, instead choosing to focus on graphics cards that will bring in more cash. Sure, Intel is the lone holdout for the budget range, but its market share remains low, and its launches aren’t as regular. Budget gamers might then continue to hold out, biding their time with progressively lower graphics settings and frame rates. (But real talk, if your GTX 970 still does it for you, keep rocking that GPU until its well-deserved retirement.) So while engineers will continue to announce newer protocols and standards (think Wi-Fi 7 or PCIe 7.0), the time to an actual launch may be much further in the future than we’re used to. And that pace change could feel like a screeching halt compared to the boom of the past couple of decades, depending on how big a slowdown is. Unpredictable pricing A close up of a circuit board. Copper is often used in circuit board traces.Michael Schwarzenberger / Pixabay Until recent years, technology’s progress also often resulted in a predictable routine for prices, too. Current devices got cheaper, and the stuff that replaced them often stayed the same price or even lowered, thanks to improved manufacturing or higher demand. Before the tariffs, that reliability in pricing trends started to waver due to factors like rising production costs. And now with these additional taxes dropped on top, we consumers may no longer be able to trust in steady pricing. First, as companies shift manufacturing locations, their logistical costs will increase. But how much is still to be determined, based on resources (e.g., new staff hiring, training, etc.) and the ability for a business to absorb current tariff costs. Some larger corporations may take a hit in an effort to keep their part of the industry more stable, for example. Additional tariffs could also cause sudden changes to MSRPs. Given how the current U.S. import tariffs were enacted, more could be announced very suddenly as well, with a notice of just a few days. Graphics cards enthusiasts (and just PC gamers in general) know how painful supply shortages can be, especially when it comes to street prices.EVGA The prospect of new tariffs looms large, too—in February, the U.S. executive branch proposed a 25 percent tariff on all semiconductors, with the intent to sharply raise the tax over time. More recently, a 25 percent tariff on copper was suggested. (You’ll find copper in circuit boards, wiring, and a lot more related to tech.) If these tariffs stack on top of the existing 20 percent on all Chinese-made goods, you could see a sharp rise in costs for products with multiple components affected by these additional taxes. Another wrinkle: When I last spoke with industry insiders, multiple sources told me they were still learning exactly how the tariffs would be applied. So they themselves are scrambling to adjust and adapt. Finally, if costs go up and availability decreases (as discussed above), you may have more trouble predicting actual retail prices. Street prices could go a bit wild, too. We can look at the GPU market for a glimpse into that chaotic, terrible universe: Few cards are available at the announced price, and any remaining stock is higher due to partner cards adding on extras. Any other cards are only available through resellers at huge markups. Before the pandemic, you could easily shop for devices and hardware, with the expectation of regular sales or discounts. Now surplus budgeting may be a requirement whenever you’re preparing for a new purchase. Read...

Gresham has appointed Matthew Greninger as General Manager of Data Automation Solutions, aiming to strengthen its market presence in financial technology. Read...

Tata Consultancy Services has partnered with the Schneider Electric Marathon de Paris as its Official AI & Technology Partner for the next three years. Read...

Workday has been named a Leader in the 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Higher Education Student Information Systems, showcasing its commitment to modernising education technology. Read...

Intel executives pledged Tuesday that its upcoming Panther Lake chip will combine the best aspects of its earlier processors, Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake. Intel executives spoke in Las Vegas on the second day of its Intel Vision conference, which engages Intel’s partners and customers. Intel’s new chief executive Lip-Bu Tan outlined his plans for Intel’s new direction on Monday, asking for brutal honesty while pledging to return Intel to greatness. We already knew that Panther Lake would be a critical product for Intel this year. Not only is the chip the next iteration of Intel’s PC client roadmap, but it’s the first chip on Intel’s next-generation 18A manufacturing process. After falling behind in the critical manufacturing process technology race, former chief executive Pat Gelsinger pushed hard to achieve five process technology nodes in four years, culminating in the 18A process. Gelsinger stepped down last year, but achieving that goal would be an important legacy. Executives said that they’ve entered “risk production” with 18A, essentially freezing the process technology development and beginning to scale up the process for eventual volume shipments. Panther Lake will be crucial for Intel Jim Johnson, senior vice president of Intel’s Client Computing Group, told Vision attendees that Panther Lake would be a hybrid of Intel’s earlier chips. “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,” Johnson said. “Our client roadmap is the most innovative we’ve ever had, and we are far from done.” Michelle Johnston Holthaus, now Intel’s chief of product, shows off Panther Lake at CES 2025.Mark Hachman / IDG In a letter to shareholders, Tan said that “Nova Lake” would follow the launch of Panther Lake. Nova Lake will debut in 2026, he said. As he has done before, Johnson reiterated that making great AI begins with creating a great PC. Intel has also invested heavily in software development, trying to lure developers to the Intel platform and make Intel’s Core and other chips the engine of client AI. In that vein, Intel announced a new AI showcase to help customers find AI-optimized applications, and especially those designed for Intel. Intel also designed its own app, called AI Playground, which allows consumers using Intel chips to run AI art and an LLM chatbot, all in a single app. Intel typically announces technical details of its next-generation chips around the Computex show, scheduled for the end of May. AI, AI, AI: Intel’s 2025 priorities Michelle Johnston Holthaus, who has returned to her post as the head of Intel’s products business after temporarily serving as Intel’s co-chief executive officer, outlined her three priorities for 2025 for the company at large. Two involved artificial intelligence. “The Intel product group is focused on three key priorities to drive your success,” she said. “First and foremost, winning in AI PCs and enabling you to capture the AI client opportunity from the edge to automotive, to the PC and to the workstation. Second, strengthening our data center capabilities across traditional data centers and workloads in order to help you maximize your existing investments, such as refreshing to recapture space, reducing power, all while reducing your total cost of ownership. “And third, we’ve got to continue to innovate in AI, enabling the next generation of software and hardware, while helping you future-proof critical infrastructure to leverage the power of AI through full stack solutions,” Holthaus explained. Read...

In 2015, I saw the best demo that you’ll probably never see: the press-only demo of the Microsoft HoloLens. This week, Microsoft celebrates its 50th anniversary on April 4, 2025, and at PCWorld we’ll be spending some time looking back on how it got here. But PCWorld also celebrated something else even more important: the life of our colleague, Gordon Mah Ung. Gordon passed away from cancer last December, and over the weekend PCWorld staff both past and present gathered together to talk about what made Gordon special. For me, it was a time to reflect. My own career began about 30 years ago, about the same time that Gordon moved over from newspapering into technology journalism. Now that he’s gone, it’s made me realize something our society struggles with; asking Gordon about his life would be a tacit acknowledgement that it was ending. It’s a shame. I wish I asked him what PCs, products, and demos made the biggest impact on him over his decades of covering technology in magazines and on the web. What stood the out strongest to a person who saw almost everything tech had to offer this century? In honor of Gordon, and just in time for Microsoft’s 50th, I want to share the coolest tech demo I’ve ever seen: the closed-doors HoloLens hands-on that Microsoft showed off on Jan. 21, 2015. Microsoft The mother of all (Microsoft) demos Microsoft doesn’t often invite journalists to its headquarters in Redmond, Washington, and for me this was my first time stepping foot on its campus. In 1968, Douglas Engelbart gave what’s known as the “mother of all demos,” showing off what became the computer mouse, hyperlinking, and more. For Microsoft, that day was pretty close! Microsoft showed off Windows 10, Windows 10 Mobile, the HoloLens, and related apps and services, such as the Windows Xbox app. I was there for the news, but most importantly for the demos: how everything looked, felt and worked. And at the end of the presentation, there was the HoloLens. Thurrott.com’s YouTube channel shows off what the journalists in the room saw: Microsoft made a number of computers, tablets and phones available for us to try out Windows 10 and the new Windows Phone OS, and I remember being pretty impressed with Windows 10 and especially Cortana, a cheery, responsive “AI” who could answer questions and perform a number of tasks. Microsoft’s operating systems usually swung back and forth between a professional business focus (Windows 2000, for example) and excessively consumer-y, such as Windows 8. Windows 10 felt like it took some of the best elements of both worlds. While my memory of that day is a little fuzzy, what I do recall is that the HoloLens wasn’t just available to try on. It was a curated experience, and required signing up for one of several groups. At a certain time, a small cohort of reporters was escorted downstairs into the basement to try out the HoloLens in a series of one-on-one demonstrations. The most important thing for a HoloLens viewer was getting the inter-pupillary distance correctly measured. Looking the HoloLens was a bit like looking through a porthole, as the field of view was limited. Naturally, it was important to get that aligned correctly with our eyes. The demo HoloLens that the world saw that day was the slick, Daft Punk-inspired headset that eventually shipped, but we were strapped into a two-piece visor and NUC-like device, tethered by a cord. This was it: Minecraft magic I chose to highlight a virtual walk on Mars as the highlight of the HoloLens launch event, but what still sticks with me, years later, is the Minecraft (“Holo Builder”) demo. We all know Minecraft. It’s a first-person game, where you walk about and, well, mine and craft weapons and tools and building materials. While the game is randomized, the interface isn’t. You’re just a blocky person with a sword or pickaxe, wandering about. The HoloLens changed all that. I walked into a standard living room: sofa, coffee table, a couple of chairs, maybe a plant or two. The HoloLens turned them into the game. This Microsoft concept art is as close as you’ll see to what I saw. I just remember it being less complex but much more vibrant.Microsoft That blew my mind. I’d never thought of actual physical surfaces as a game board, even for someone who had thought that the “battle chess” holographic setup in Star Wars’ Millennium Falcon was pretty cool. The HoloLens allowed me a godlike view, walking around Minecraft plateaus on the couch — even allowing me to peer through “holes” in the coffee table into the fiery Underworld of the game. Of course, there was TNT — and that blew up, too. Could you flick Creepers into the abyss? I don’t really recall if “I” as a player was represented, meaning that I’m not sure if the perspective allowed by the HoloLens really allowed a “game,” per se. It was a fantastic demo, certainly, but that’s all it ever was. But that was part of what made the HoloLens (for the time) so cool; its ability to “scan” your surroundings and apply virtual reality to it. Microsoft did this with several HoloLens apps you likely never saw: a murder mystery that put “clues” in your vision, and a surprisingly fun version of the Conker platforming franchise that allowed you to basically send your character bouncing off desks and stairs. When I had my own HoloLens I literally snuck into an office building and tried playing Conker in an empty room with a staircase and other furniture. Then some lady came out and threatened to call the cops on me, ending that little adventure. Little did she know how close she was to a piece of computing history. The HoloLens would have been a great assistant What sticks with me as the second best demo was the integration of Skype into the HoloLens. Microsoft asked us to rewire a light switch — a real one, with live current flowing through it. As someone who had almost spot-welded a socket wrench while changing a car battery, I had and still have a healthy respect for electricity. What Microsoft had us do was connect to someone who knew what they were doing via Skype, allowing me to share what I was seeing. The remote person then visually highlighted what I needed to do and how to do it. Sure, it was child’s play for someone who knew what they were doing, but it validated all of the “remote assistance” business cases that Microsoft would promote throughout the life of the HoloLens and beyond. Today, how-to YouTube videos have basically replaced this idea, unfortunately, and if you still don’t understand, a handyman or plumber is always on call for a substantial fee. But a decade ago, it seemed like if I could call a call center for assistance, why shouldn’t they be able to remotely help me via the HoloLens? Objects in space may be cooler than they appear One of the people I saw this past weekend was former PCWorld games guru Hayden Dingman, who wrote a superlative series of articles on gaming and the emerging VR space. He and I both loved Tilt Brush, the “painting in space” application that both Hayden and I originally saw in 2015. Microsoft had its own take on Tilt Brush, known as Holo Studio, which allowed you to create 3D objects on the fly, basically allowing you to create them and then pin them various places in virtual space, if I remember correctly. Again, it lacked the emotional resonance that characterized Tilt Brush, and served more as an introduction to showing how the HoloLens could preserve objects in 3D space, even when you weren’t looking at them. Looking back, I’m not really sure why I loved the final demo so much, a HoloLens excursions across the surface of Mars. To be fair, the HoloLens “painted” the ground, preserving the illusion that you were walking on another planet. But peering at virtual rocks and landmarks seems less momentous now than it did at the time. (I still say — as I do every time I think about the HoloLens — that there’s still a fantastic opportunity to recreate Dream Park, the 2017 novel by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes where players LARP an augmented-reality game overlaid over real actors and objects.) Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair A year later, I was in a hotel room in San Francisco, getting an exclusive look at the HoloLens days before Microsoft allowed other reporters to test it out. In 2019, I couldn’t help but bring it out again for a night of playing with it in a darkened office and a retro review. What strikes me, of course, is that the HoloLens ultimately failed, probably doomed by the same lack of applications that ultimately led to the Windows Phone’s demise. Microsoft did produce a HoloLens 2, only to get rid of it, too. Windows Mixed Reality, the offshoot marketed at PC makers, bombed even harder. So did the metaverse. Alex Kipman, the creator of HoloLens, departed Microsoft after allegations of harassment. Ultimately, the HoloLens is the iconic product representing an entire generation of VR failure. I’ve seen early versions of smartphones and computers and consumer electronics, and even prototypes that I agreed not to talk about. One of the only other products that left me dumbfounded was the ability to “pause” live TV during the launch of TiVo and ReplayTV. But really, that was simply because of the instant, transformative effect on culture. The iPhone? No, not even that. For me, the single most mind-blowing tech demo I’ve ever experienced was the ability to peer into a coffee table, light a fuse, and launch skeletons into the air via a virtual block of TNT. I’d love to see something as cool as that yet again. Read...

By now, you’ve heard of the U.S.’s decision to levy tariffs on imports—all goods made in China, as well as select materials worldwide, like steel and aluminum. At the time of this article’s publishing, taxes on products coming from Canada and Mexico also were likely to begin early April, with additional tariffs proposed for more materials and products worldwide. I covered the details about these tariffs in a FAQ, as well as a set of highlights for a shorter way to get up to speed on the situation. I also created a breakout of sample cost increases so you could better see what actual purchases could look like. But most news has focused on the immediate dollars-and-cents effect of these new taxes. What’s been talked about less are the other ways tariffs will impact the tech industry—consequences that could dampen or even drive back certain aspects that we currently take for granted. At best, we’ll see a temporary blow. At worst, we could feel this hit for years to come. Harder to obtain Technology has become more available to the masses over time. Long ago, personal computers were a rare luxury, found only in homes of enthusiasts or the well-to-do. But as popularity rose, devices and hardware became easier to get. People wanted to spend their money on fresh gear—and so supply became more plentiful. Remember when EVGA made graphics cards? Yeah, they don’t any longer, after looking at the cost of that part of their business. Let’s hope the tariffs don’t cause other companies to make similar moves within tech.Brad Chacos / Foundry But when prices go up, demand goes down. Companies already have an incentive to slow the rollout of new products due to the economic instability brought about by the tariffs. If you add on a weakened appetite from consumers for discretionary purchases, vendors have reason to pull back on the production. They may become slower to release successors to products or even a wider variety of products. In particular, smaller companies decide to pause or stop product lines.  Industry insiders expressed this very sentiment to me when discussing the tariffs and their effect. Without the ability to make accurate forecasts, businesses have to proceed with more caution. They’ll either produce less of their usual devices or hardware—or opt out of selling certain items altogether. After years of ever-growing options for consumers, shrinking down to fewer choices will be a sad step backward. Price stagnation (or even increases) Intel’s Kaby Lake Core i7-7700X launched just a couple of months before AMD’s first-generation Ryzen CPUs, sporting a 4-core, 8-thread processor. By fall, its Coffee Lake Core i7-8700K successor had added two more cores and four more threads. Competition makes a difference.Adam Patrick Murray / Foundry Innovation and competition help lower costs for technology. Manufacturing becomes more efficient, growing demand spreads production costs over a wider field, and/or the tech is succeeded by something even fresher. But if tech gear becomes less varied and harder to get, those factors won’t be as dependable as an influence on price. How much you’ll pay for a laptop, phone, or piece of hardware will likely stick where it is—or go up. As my colleague Gordon Mah Ung loved to point out, Intel sold consumers 4-core, 8-thread CPUs for years, always at similar MSRPs. And when Team Blue launched its first 10-core processor, the suggested price was a staggering $1,723. Fast forward a year, after AMD released its first generation of Ryzen chips, and Intel’s top consumer chip had inched up in core count, with the $359 Intel Core i7-8700K sporting 6 cores and 12 threads. Its closest rivals? The $329 Ryzen 7 1700 and $399 Ryzen 7 1700X, both of which sported 8 cores and 16 threads. This history lesson shows that consumers get less value when fewer options exist. Companies can charge whatever they want when faced with less pressure to keep pushing the envelope. Slower release of new products Should early adopters become more reluctant to try out new gadgets, companies could stop trying novel new form factors, like this tri-fold smartphone.Luke Baker If you’re a company facing economic uncertainty, how much would you want to invest in different products? Likewise, if you’re a consumer looking at devices with fewer or smaller upgrades that cost as much as the previous model, will you want to buy anything new? It’s a bit of a standoff, and one that the tariffs could spark. For example, let’s say you’re used to buying a replacement phone every two years. But if the features don’t change dramatically, and prices remain high (especially for flagship models), perhaps you’ll stick to what you’ve already got in your pocket. Companies might then not push novel form factors as hard, like tri-fold phones and other variants. Similarly, Nvidia and AMD could continue to delay their attention to budget gamers, instead choosing to focus on graphics cards that will bring in more cash. Sure, Intel is the lone holdout for the budget range, but its market share remains low, and its launches aren’t as regular. Budget gamers might then continue to hold out, biding their time with progressively lower graphics settings and frame rates. (But real talk, if your GTX 970 still does it for you, keep rocking that GPU until its well-deserved retirement.) So while engineers will continue to announce newer protocols and standards (think Wi-Fi 7 or PCIe 7.0), the time to an actual launch may be much further in the future than we’re used to. And that pace change could feel like a screeching halt compared to the boom of the past couple of decades, depending on how big a slowdown is. Unpredictable pricing A close up of a circuit board. Copper is often used in circuit board traces.Michael Schwarzenberger / Pixabay Until recent years, technology’s progress also often resulted in a predictable routine for prices, too. Current devices got cheaper, and the stuff that replaced them often stayed the same price or even lowered, thanks to improved manufacturing or higher demand. Before the tariffs, that reliability in pricing trends started to waver due to factors like rising production costs. And now with these additional taxes dropped on top, we consumers may no longer be able to trust in steady pricing. First, as companies shift manufacturing locations, their logistical costs will increase. But how much is still to be determined, based on resources (e.g., new staff hiring, training, etc.) and the ability for a business to absorb current tariff costs. Some larger corporations may take a hit in an effort to keep their part of the industry more stable, for example. Additional tariffs could also cause sudden changes to MSRPs. Given how the current U.S. import tariffs were enacted, more could be announced very suddenly as well, with a notice of just a few days. Graphics cards enthusiasts (and just PC gamers in general) know how painful supply shortages can be, especially when it comes to street prices.EVGA The prospect of new tariffs looms large, too—in February, the U.S. executive branch proposed a 25 percent tariff on all semiconductors, with the intent to sharply raise the tax over time. More recently, a 25 percent tariff on copper was suggested. (You’ll find copper in circuit boards, wiring, and a lot more related to tech.) If these tariffs stack on top of the existing 20 percent on all Chinese-made goods, you could see a sharp rise in costs for products with multiple components affected by these additional taxes. Another wrinkle: When I last spoke with industry insiders, multiple sources told me they were still learning exactly how the tariffs would be applied. So they themselves are scrambling to adjust and adapt. Finally, if costs go up and availability decreases (as discussed above), you may have more trouble predicting actual retail prices. Street prices could go a bit wild, too. We can look at the GPU market for a glimpse into that chaotic, terrible universe: Few cards are available at the announced price, and any remaining stock is higher due to partner cards adding on extras. Any other cards are only available through resellers at huge markups. Before the pandemic, you could easily shop for devices and hardware, with the expectation of regular sales or discounts. Now surplus budgeting may be a requirement whenever you’re preparing for a new purchase. Read...

Researchers are always developing better battery technologies, hoping to find ones that last a long time and never need to be recharged—and this month, we have yet another exciting breakthrough. South Korean scientists from the Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science & Technology recently presented a prototype battery that works according to the betavoltaic principle. As the researchers explain: “Nuclear batteries generate power by harnessing high-energy particles emitted by radioactive materials. Not all radioactive elements emit radiation that’s damaging to living organisms, and some radiation can be blocked by certain materials. For example, beta particles (also known as beta rays) can be shielded with a thin sheet of aluminum, making betavoltaics a potentially safe choice for nuclear batteries.” This betavoltaic battery prototype is based on carbon-14, an unstable and radioactive form of carbon called radiocarbon. Although this carbon isotope is radioactive, it only produces beta radiation, which can be easily shielded to prevent harm. Radiocarbon is already a byproduct of nuclear power plants and is therefore cheap, readily available, and easy to recycle, according to the researchers. And since radiocarbon degrades very slowly, a battery powered by radiocarbon could theoretically provide energy for decades, centuries, or even thousands of years. According to the researchers, the latest prototype of this radiocarbon battery has a significantly higher energy conversion efficiency, which has increased from 0.48 to 2.86 percent. This kind of nuclear battery would only be the size of a finger, and such long-lasting nuclear batteries could enable numerous applications, says Professor Su-Il In. For example, a pacemaker powered by such a battery would last a lifetime and make surgical replacement unnecessary. At present, however, this betavoltaic battery only converts a tiny proportion of the radioactive decay into electrical energy, which results in lower performance compared to conventional lithium-ion batteries. Researchers still need to carry out further development work in this area. Betavolt’s mini nuclear battery The Chinese company Betavolt New Energy Technology Co., Ltd., based in Beijing, previously presented a diamond nuclear battery at the beginning of 2024, which is slightly smaller than a coin and is supposed to be capable of supplying electricity for 50 years without needing to be recharged in between or requiring maintenance. The company said its battery was in the pilot phase and prepping to be launched on the market in mass production. Betavolt claimed that its atomic energy batteries could meet the needs for long-life power supply in various scenarios, such as aerospace, AI devices, medical devices, MEMS systems, advanced sensors, small drones, and micro robots. Betavolt’s diamond nuclear energy battery.Betavolt According to the manufacturer, the miniature atomic energy battery combines nickel-63 nuclear isotope decomposition technology and China’s first diamond semiconductor module (fourth-generation semiconductor). In this field, and in the development of miniature atomic energy batteries, China is “far ahead of European and American scientific research institutions and companies,” according to the claim. Betavolt describes the structure of its mini nuclear battery as follows: “Betavolt’s team of scientists developed a unique single-crystal diamond semiconductor with a thickness of just 10 micrometres by placing a 2-micrometre-thick nickel-63 film between two diamond semiconductor converters. The decay energy of the radioactive source is converted into electric current, which forms a self-contained unit. Core batteries are modular and can consist of dozens or hundreds of independent unit modules and can be used in series and parallel, allowing battery products of different sizes and capacities to be manufactured.” Betavolt still needs to increase the performance of its mini nuclear battery to, say, provide a mobile phone with a permanent power supply. Betavolt’s first ready-to-use battery is the 15mm x 15mm x 5mm BV100, with an output of 100 microwatts and a voltage of 3 volts. This will be followed in 2025 by a mini nuclear battery with an output of 1 watt. The batteries can be connected in series and in parallel. More on nuclear batteries Nuclear batteries, also known as radionuclide batteries, have been around for a long time and are by no means a Chinese invention. Back in 2019, Russian researchers reported a breakthrough in nuclear mini-batteries with a 50-year service life. Small nuclear batteries have been used in space travel since the 1960s, and there were even nuclear-powered pacemakers in the 1970s. These nuclear batteries obtain their energy from the radioactive decay of Ni-63, but unlike conventional radionuclide generators, the energy is not obtained from the heat generated during radioactive decay. Instead, the beta radiation of Ni-63 is converted directly into electrical energy with a diamond semiconductor. Over the years and decades, however, the amount of emitted energy decreases. In addition, such a battery can supply comparatively little energy. Due to the use of radioactive material, the use of this energy generation method in everyday devices—such as mobile phones—is unlikely in the longer term. It’s also important to note that this method does NOT result in a dangerous chain reaction, as is the case with a nuclear reactor. Read...