TSMC is planning to set up an advanced packaging plant at its Arizona location by late 2027 after American customers kept begging for local CoWoS capacity. The company is apparently converting space that was supposed to be another chip fab into a packaging facility instead because clients like NVIDIA are stuck shipping their wafers back to Taiwan just to get them packaged, which is a massive pain.
The Taiwan chipmaker originally wanted to outsource packaging work to American firms like Amkor, but that plan seems dead. Competition from Intel's EMIB and Foveros tech is heating up since companies like Microsoft, Qualcomm, Apple, and Tesla are eyeing Team Blue's services as backup options when TSMC can't keep up with demand.
Pathea Games is cooking up The God Slayer, a steampunk action RPG that marks a pretty big shift from their cozy My Time series. Founder Zifei Wu says the studio barely touches generative AI because most algorithms choke when you ask for Asian steampunk vibes, spitting out weird garbage that doesn't match their vision. They mostly use it to pull reference images when brainstorming character concepts, then handle everything else manually.
The approach keeps their world-building grounded instead of relying on AI slop that misses the mark. Wu thinks staying away from heavy automation is the right call for their project since there aren't enough solid examples online for the tech to learn from anyway. The game is dropping on PC and...
The Game Awards is coming back with Geoff Keighley hosting another massive showcase that celebrates gaming's best while dropping world premieres. The show streams free across YouTube, Twitch, Amazon Prime Video, and other platforms, and it'll probably run somewhere between three and four hours like usual. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is racking up nominations against heavy hitters like Hades II and Death Stranding 2.
Evanescence is performing a song from the Devil May Cry Netflix anime, and a bunch of trailers are expected to drop. Confirmed or heavily rumored reveals include Resident Evil Requiem with a possible Leon Kennedy appearance, EXODUS getting a new trailer, Titanfall 3 buzz, and Creative Assembly dropping something for Total...
AMD is gearing up to drop some refreshed Ryzen AI Max chips that bump memory speeds to LPDDR5X-8533, which is a slight upgrade from the 8,000 MT/s that Strix Halo currently handles. These new SKUs are targeting mid-range buyers and should pack similar integrated graphics power, but specs are still pretty vague at this point.
The refresh lineup is not bringing anything crazy since most specs stay the same aside from clock tweaks and the memory bump. A leaker mentioned that upcoming processors might hit 8533 MT/s speeds, though it is unclear if that applies to the Ryzen AI Max+ 388 and 392 that leaked before or if these are completely different variants. AMD might tease the refresh series at CES, and people are hoping for more balanced...
Samsung might still be tweaking its Exynos 2600 chip before actually cranking out full production runs, despite dropping a trailer for the thing recently. A Korean outlet says the 2nm GAA processor has not hit mass manufacturing yet, even though the company supposedly had decent yields back in September and already locked down orders from Chinese crypto miners and Tesla.
The holdup could be Samsung trying to push yields higher than the 50 percent they were sitting at earlier, aiming for that 70 percent sweet spot to cut down on defective units. This matters because DRAM and NAND prices are spiking hard right now, so wasting silicon is getting expensive. The Galaxy S26 lineup is supposed to drop in February with these chips inside, so...
Memory prices have gone absolutely haywire, and the situation is about to get way nastier than anyone expected. Both DDR5 and DDR4 kits are skyrocketing because AI data centers are hoovering up all the supply, and manufacturers like Micron are ditching consumer lines to chase those fat enterprise margins. Industry sources are saying shortages will drag on until late 2027, and prices haven't even peaked yet. That's supposed to happen around mid-2026, which is wild considering some kits have already tripled or quadrupled in cost.
Basic DDR5 setups are hitting absurd numbers on retailers like Newegg and Amazon, with 32GB kits running over $300 and 256GB configs pushing past $3,000. A memory brand executive confirmed that suppliers are...
Apple might ditch the physical SIM card slot on the iPhone Fold to save space inside the device, according to a Chinese leaker called Instant Digital. The tipster is backing up what Bloomberg's Mark Gurman and analyst Ming-Chi Kuo already said about the foldable going eSIM-only. Kuo mentioned earlier that the ultra-thin build doesn't leave room for a SIM tray, and Instant Digital seems to agree with that take.
The company already ran into problems in China when it launched the eSIM-only iPhone Air, since the country was pretty against eSIMs until Apple pushed through some regulatory changes. The foldable is rumored to have a creaseless screen, book-style design with a 7.74-inch main display, Touch ID instead of Face ID, and a massive...
Intel VP John Pitzer says the chip maker is gearing up to claw back market share with its Panther Lake and Nova Lake processors after getting wrecked by AMD this year. Arrow Lake flopped hard against the Ryzen 9000 series and X3D chips, and desktop sales tanked. Panther Lake drops at CES with new core designs and better integrated graphics, while Nova Lake arrives later with a big last-level cache to compete with AMD's V-Cache stuff.
Intel is also bringing production back in-house after outsourcing everything for Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake. About 70% of Panther Lake's logic tiles will get made on the 18A node internally, and Nova Lake will push that even higher since it covers both laptops and desktops. This move hurts margins...
ARM is setting up a chip-design academy in South Korea that'll pump out 1,400 trained semiconductor pros by 2030. The Japanese-owned company inked a deal with South Korea's trade ministry to boost the country's chip and AI game. The school is supposed to help out local fabless chip companies like Silicon Works and AI startups like Rebellions.
South Korea is also planning to launch specialized grad programs for the semiconductor industry. During a separate chat, SoftBank boss Masayoshi Son told South Korean President Lee Jae-myung that the country's main problem for hitting artificial superintelligence is not having enough energy. Son pointed out that global firms are building data centers there, but he thinks the projects are way...
