The closure of the former prince`s start-up competition Pitch@Palace marks his step away from public life Read...

AMD’s roadmap marches on: the company confirmed the presence of its next-generation Zen 7 architecture, and talked briefly about the company’s next-generation PC graphics roadmap as well. AMD hosted a day for financial analysts on Tuesday, outlining its businesses for a cadre of Wall Street investors and analysts. Unfortunately, the agenda reflected AMD’s new corporate priorities: with the bulk of AMD’s revenue now coming from its datacenter business, AMD scheduled just twenty minutes for its client businesses. AMD chief executive Lisa Su also identified the datacenter as “the most strategic business” for AMD. Before it did, however, AMD also revealed some brief details of its architectural roadmaps., where AMD chief technology officer Mark Papermaster announced that AMD was working on Zen 7, its next-generation CPU architecture. That will underpin AMD’s Ryzen CPUs, where in the desktop Su said that AMD commands over 50 percent of the desktop CPU channel. “We’ve delivered five generations of the Zen CPU,” Papermaster said. “We split it into high performance versions, power and compact, cloud optimized version also used in our networks, but all maintaining a consistency of instruction set architecture. We went where no company was willing to go in the bet we made with chiplets.” Mark Hachman / Foundry AMD’s Zen 5 architecture is the foundation of the Ryzen 9000 family. The Zen 6 architecture will debut in the company’s next-gen EPYC processor for servers, debuting this year, Papermaster said. Papermaster didn’t say anything about Zen 7, though he showed it on a roadmap slide. (That slide didn’t include an estimated ship date, either.) AMD continues to stagger its design teams, assigning one team to each architecture generation and going back and forth. (That means that the Zen 5 team is now shifting to work on Zen 7.) AMD also continues to develop two types of cores for each Zen architecture, one focusing on performance and the other focusing on power. Mark Hachman / Foundry Papermaster also provided an early look at AMD’s desktop graphics roadmap, though without revealing many details. AMD is equally interested in improving the performance of its desktop GPUs as well as other edge applications where it can apply GPU compute. Papermaster also showed off some of the improvements AMD is considering for its NPU roadmap as well. There, AMD plans more AI TOPS and more power efficiency, without going into details. Mark Hachman / Foundry Jack Huynh, the senior vice president who heads the Computing and Graphics Group at AMD, did not go into additional details, though he did indicate that AMD plans to move into edge AI as well as its existing markets in the mobile, workstation, and desktop markets. AMD has a “no compromise” PC strategy he said, infusing AI into everything the company does. “We’ve built tremendous momentum, and we have a clear path to market leadership,” Huynh said. “Now we’re entering a new era. AI is transforming the PC experience and redefining what compute means across every device in our portfolio. This is not just another product cycle, it’s a once in a generation shift towards expanding our opportunity across every segment. Our next chapter is about scaling the client business, deepening our council advantage, and unlocking new growth with AI at the edge. If I can leave you one thought today, it’s we are ready to lead the gaming and AI PC era.” Read...

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I’ve reviewed a lot of laptops for PCWorld and I’ve been noticing something I don’t like: the more expensive the laptop, the fewer ports it tends to have. It’s been trending this way for a while now, but lately it’s gotten a lot worse—and that sucks. In my time as a laptop reviewer, I’ve seen budget options packed with ports, sometimes even managing to fit Ethernet jacks into their small frames. But I’ve also seen luxurious top-end models with almost no ports at all, and that’s downright wrong. Some even omit the headphone jack! These days, if you’re in the market for a premium laptop, there are some real gotchas to be aware of… and connectivity is one of them. Premium laptops often skimp on ports Laptop manufacturers seem to think customers want to pay more money for fewer ports, but that’s nonsense. The idea that a professional spending $3,000 on a 4.5-pound laptop doesn’t want the option of plugging in an HDMI cable is simply ridiculous to me. But going by the many laptops I’ve reviewed, laptop manufacturers don’t agree with me. They think you’ll pay extra if it means fewer ports. The Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i 14 is beautiful, but it should have an audio jack.Chris Hoffman / Foundry Here are a few examples of laptops I’ve reviewed over the past year alone that exhibit this sort of attitude towards ports: The Dell 16 Premium is a $3,199 high-end laptop with discrete Nvidia graphics, but it omits HDMI and USB-A ports. The Acer Aspire Go 15 is a brilliant $499 laptop that delivers both USB-A ports and an HDMI port. The Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i 14 is a $1,899 premium laptop that lacks a headphone jack. You get two USB-C ports… and that’s it! The HP EliteBook 6 G1q with 5G is a $1,695 business laptop with 5G driving up its price, but it somehow manages to also pack Ethernet and HDMI into a compact mobility-focused machine. Over and over, it’s the same story played out: manufacturers design high-end laptops with aesthetics, thinness, and tapered edges in mind while budget laptops are designed for practicality. Somewhere out there, I’m sure there’s a laptop designer who’s dreaming about wireless charging with the ultimate goal of creating a port-free laptop. Ugh. If you ask me, it feels like the true luxury day-to-day experience these days is to opt for a “budget” laptop that doesn’t force you to plug in a USB hub or hook up a high-speed dock just to output to HDMI, connect a traditional USB-A drive, or even plug in a pair of headphones. Business laptops tout their ports What’s amusing is that manufacturers are pushing sleek designs with minimal ports as premium options, but when it comes to business laptops they’re all about marketing the port selection. “This laptop has lots of ports so you don’t have to worry about taking a dongle with you,” they say. “That’s a big upgrade for workers.” The HP EliteBook 6 G1q’s port layout feels downright luxurious.Chris Hoffman / Foundry It’s absolutely true and PC manufacturers should tout it. But PC makers themselves are to blame for ports becoming a rare commodity. A budget laptop has plenty of ports, a premium laptop costs extra because it removes those ports, and then a business laptop built for work costs extra and delivers a reasonable selection of ports. That’s the landscape we find ourselves in right now. Even Apple’s MacBook Pro has HDMI and a headphone jack You might assume this state of affairs is Apple’s fault and that PC manufacturers are chasing Apple’s design choices. That’s not true. MacBooks offer more ports than “luxury” Windows laptops. For starters, all of Apple’s MacBooks still have audio jacks. Meanwhile, a handful of Lenovo machines don’t have any headphone jacks, including the Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i 14 and Lenovo Yoga Book 9i. If 3.5mm audio is important to you, beware of buying high-end Lenovo laptops! I appreciate the fact that this MacBook Pro still has an HDMI port.Foundry To be fair, Apple has dropped the USB-A port from its machines and the base MacBook Air only offers two Thunderbolt 4 (USB-C) ports. Still, all MacBook Pro models have HDMI ports and SDXC card slots. So no, Apple isn’t to blame here. Only a PC manufacturer would sell a high-end $3,199 machine for professionals and skip the HDMI port. Only a PC maker would decide a laptop doesn’t need an audio jack. Even Apple refuses to remove the traditional 3.5mm audio jack from laptops! Thin laptops are the new small bezels Thin laptops are nice to hold. When I pick up a review laptop and feel smooth metal and glass with a tapered edge and an almost impossibly light weight, I’m immediately impressed. But once I try to plug in devices and realize there’s no USB-A or HDMI, I wince. If there’s no 3.5mm audio jack, I scratch my head in confusion. That’s not what I want from a laptop. Instead of just carrying a laptop, you now have to carry a laptop plus a hub. It reminds me of the thin bezel craze a few years ago. Laptop reviewers focused so much on the size of the bezels around a laptop’s screen—the smaller the bezel, the more premium the machine. The Dell 16 Premium is sleek and portable, but at what cost?Chris Hoffman / Foundry Personally, I don’t see the point. Yes, a streamlined laptop design can be nice. But you can see exactly how the bezels look in photos—you don’t need me measuring the bezel with a ruler and assigning a laptop review score based on the size of a machine’s bezel. There’s way more to a laptop than that. In the same way, laptops are increasingly differentiating themselves more on design than functionality. If removing the HDMI port or even the headphone jack makes the laptop look like an impressive art piece in a photo or in-store display, manufacturers will go for it. Ports aren’t the only things that get sacrificed either. Sometimes a beautiful laptop will feel light as a feather but lack the battery life to get me through a workday. Why? Because the laptop manufacturer has prioritized light weight over long battery life. Note the ports when buying a laptop If you’re buying a laptop, I always recommend paying particular attention to its ports. There’s a good chance you’ll want at least HDMI, an SD card slot, and maybe even Ethernet. Extra USB-C ports are nice, too, especially on laptops that charge via USB-C. (I like to see a USB-C port on each side of the laptop so you can plug in on either side to charge.) When we review laptops here at PCWorld, we always list the ports they offer, and I always take that into consideration when writing up the pros and cons of a laptop. That’s how important they are. Sadly, if you want a ports-packed laptop these days, you’ll probably have better luck with a budget laptop than a premium one. On the other hand, if you almost never plug anything into your laptop, you might love a thin-and-light premium laptop with minimal ports. As for me? I don’t want to live with a laptop so “luxurious” that it has no audio jack. Read...

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