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Chips

RAM is ruining everything

Price hikes related to the memory shortage aren’t just coming for PC gamers; smartphones, laptops, and storage drives could soon get increases, too.

Emma Roth
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Richard Lawler
Apple hardware vp Johny Srouji reportedly tells staff “I don’t plan on leaving anytime soon.”

After a string of exec departures from Apple, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported a few days ago that Srouji, who oversees the chips that have helped iPhones, Macs, and other devices lead their categories, had discussed leaving for another company.

Today, Gurman reports the exec sought to calm employees, sending a message to his division that said “I love my team, and I love my job at Apple, and I don’t plan on leaving anytime soon.”

The new silicon valley (literally)

Is the promise of jobs worth all the water and chemicals it takes to manufacture chips in the Arizona desert?

Justine Calma
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Terrence O'Brien
Snapdragon 6s Gen 4 walks the line between budget and midrange.

Qualcomm’s new chip brings its 4nm process to the lowest end of its 6 series chips. It packs four Cortex-A78 performance cores at up to 2.4 GHz and four Cortex-A55 efficiency cores clocked at 1.8 GHz, a nice bump from the 2-and-6 arrangement of the 6s Gen 3. You won’t find too many phones out there running the 6s, but maybe a future version of the Moto G Stylus can benefit.

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Dominic Preston
Qualcomm holds Arm at bay.

It’s claiming a “complete victory” in the companies’ legal battle over licensing, after a judge dismissed Arm’s attempt to have December’s jury trial either thrown out, or held all over again. Of course, Arm plans to appeal, leaving the chip industry’s biggest frenemies stuck in court a little longer.

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Dominic Preston
Arm nixes Cortex.

If you care about who makes the processors that MediaTek, Samsung, and more use in their smartphone chips, you’ll want to know that Arm has released new CPUs and GPUs named Lumex. It marks the end of its “Cortex” cores, which now get boring names like “C1-Ultra” and “C1-Pro.”

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Sean Hollister
AMD is selling record numbers of CPUs at Intel’s expense.

AMD just reported its Q2 2025 earnings, and it’s attributing a new quarterly revenue record of $7.7 billion to one particular thing: “record server and PC processor sales.” And while AMD doesn’t mention its flagging competitor Intel, it seems many are turning to Team Red: AMD just crossed 40 percent market share for the first time on the Steam Hardware Survey of PC gamers, and it may have 40 percent server market share soon too.

Data center wasn’t the big driver this quarter, BTW: there was a surge in consumer gaming and client chips.
Data center wasn’t the big driver this quarter, BTW: there was a surge in consumer gaming and client chips.
Image: AMD
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Dominic Preston
TSMC’s US chips come at a premium.

Five to 20 percent, to be a little inexact. That’s according to AMD CEO Lisa Su, who told Bloomberg that components from TSMC’s Arizona facilities will cost more than similar parts made in Taiwan, but says it’s worth it for diversifying supply chains.

AMD is expecting its first Arizona-made chips by the end of the year.