News coverage surrounding artificial intelligence almost invariably focuses on the deals that send hundreds of billions of dollars flying, or the latest hardware developments in the GPU or datacenter world. Benchmarking efforts have almost exclusively focused on the silicon, though, and that's what SemiAnalysis intends to address with its open-source InferenceMax AI benchmarking suite . It measures the efficiency of the many components of AI software stacks in real-world inference scenarios (when AI models are actually "running" rather than being
President Trump warns of massively increased tariffs in wake of China's rare earth mineral 'monopoly position' — Xi Jinping meeting cancelled as Trump promises retaliation for Beijing's expanded expor
Heads of state from the U.S. and China had planned to convene next week in South Korea, amid prolonged and ongoing trade tensions between the two nations. It seems like this meeting is now off the table, as President Trump has just posted a scathing message on his Truth Social platform, accusing China of monopolizing every element of the rare earth mineral pipeline. In retaliation, "massive increases of tariffs" are being mulled for Chinese products entering America, among other
Intel's 18A production starts before TSMC’s competing N2 tech — here's how the two process nodes compare
Intel has started volume production of its Core Ultra 3-series 'Panther Lake' processors , the company said on Thursday. Intel's Panther Lake is a crucial CPU for the company, designed to demonstrate Intel's ability to develop a competitive processor and produce it internally using its leading-edge manufacturing technology. This is intended to enhance the company's reputation among clients, the general public, and potential foundry customers.
While the official start of 18A
U.S. Senate passes bill that forces AI chipmakers to prioritize sales to American companies — House now set to amend or pass legislation
The United States Senate has just passed the 'GAIN AI' legislation as part of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which would require AI chipmakers like Nvidia and AMD to prioritize chip orders for American companies over export orders, particularly to China and its allies. As reported by Bloomberg , the bipartisan bill sailed easily through the Senate and is now under consideration by the House.
“Today, the Senate acted to make sure American customers — including small businesses and startups —aren
SoftBank is seeking $5 billion loan to invest in OpenAI, plans to use Arm shares as collateral — rapid AI expansion continues, investment could top $30 billion
SoftBank is arranging a new $5 billion margin loan to invest in OpenAI and use its shares in Arm Holdings as collateral, reports Bloomberg . The move will enable the company to increase its stake in OpenAI and/or invest in the company's infrastructure, while taking the company's total borrowing against Arm shares to $18.5 billion.
The Japanese investment company is said to be negotiating with several international banks to finalize the deal, which will be collateralized by Arm
Microsoft cancels Wisconsin data center after community pushback — 244-acre Caledonia site on hold, but Redmond says it remains committed to the region
Microsoft has cancelled its initial plan of building a data center in Caledonia, Wisconsin, after residents and elected officials objected to the plan. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel , Redmond is cancelling its application for the current site, although it’s still looking at building one in a different location in Caledonia or in another part of Racine County.
“Based on the community feedback we heard, we have chosen not to move forward with this site,” Microsoft said to the publication. “
Back to its all-time low price, Alienware's AW3225QF4K QD-OLED gaming monitor is reduced by $350 in Dell's post-Prime Day deal
Amazon's Prime Big Deals Day sales extravaganza is firmly in the rear-view mirror as we settle briefly for a few weeks before the even bigger sales events come into view. November will see Black Friday and Cyber Monday enter the fray with early deals starting weeks beforehand. But that's not to say that deals will disappear. Dell, for example, always has some deal running on one of their product lines, and today it's on one of their gorgeous QD-
China’s new rare-earth curbs target chipmaking industry in retaliation to US restrictions — rare earth curbs reach back to older 14nm process tech and 256-layer memory
China has quietly extended its rare-earth export controls into the heart of the semiconductor supply chain. Based on machine translation of a new notice published October 9, the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) said that exports of Chinese-origin rare earths or products made with them will now require government licenses if they’re linked to the development or manufacture of advanced chips — defined as logic at 14 nanometers or below, or memory with 256 layers or more.
China bans research company that helped unearth Huawei's use of TSMC tech despite U.S. bans — TechInsights added to Unreliable Entity List by state authorities
The Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China just added several prominent Western companies to its Unreliable Entity List, including the research firm TechInsights. This Canada-based company was one of the institutions that revealed Huawei used TSMC to build the Ascend 910B chip despite American sanctions, resulting in a possible $1-billion fine for the Taiwanese chip maker. According to the announcement by the Ministry of Commerce [machine translated] (via Bloomberg ), TechInsights
Microsoft deploys world's first 'supercomputer-scale' GB300 NVL72 Azure cluster — 4,608 GB300 GPUs linked together to form a single, unified accelerator capable of 1.44 PFLOPS of inference
Microsoft has just upgraded its Azure cloud platform with Nvidia's Blackwell Ultra, deploying what it calls the world's first large-scale GB300 NVL72 supercomputing cluster. This cluster includes several racks housing exactly 4,608 GB300 GPUs connected by NVLink 5 switch fabric, which is then interconnected via Nvidia’s Quantum-X800 InfiniBand networking fabric across the entire cluster. This allows a single NVL72 rack to