At IFA 2026 in Berlin, Minisforum revealed upgraded versions of its flagship NAS and mini-workstation, the AI Agent NAS N5 Max-P495 and MS-S1 Max-P495, both powered by AMD's Ryzen AI Max+ Pro 495 processor paired with a Radeon 8065S GPU. The chip delivers up to 131 TOPS of AI performance and supports up to 192GB of unified memory, with the NAS also offering up to 200TB of local storage for running AI agents like OpenClaw or Hermes directly on-device.
A die shot shared by SemiAnalysis reveals detailed specifications of Samsung's upcoming Exynos 2700 chipset, expected to power some Galaxy S27 models alongside Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro. The image shows a ten-core CPU with two differently clocked C2 Ultra performance cores and eight C2 Pro cores, paired with a substantial cache setup, an Xclipse 970 GPU, and a large NPU block.
Nvidia has released PAIR (Personal AI Router) in open beta on GitHub, a system that lets users split GPU-intensive AI agent workloads into parallel subtasks and offload them to other computers on the same local network. The software works across Windows, Mac and Linux, uses mDNS for device discovery and MTLS for security, and currently supports the Ollama and LM Studio model engines.
A leaked slide reportedly sourced from an OEM or motherboard partner outlines Intel's production and launch plan for its Nova Lake-S desktop chips, showing mass production starting in Q4 2026. Only a 28-core unlocked model would debut in Q1 2027, with the flagship 52-core chip pushed to later in the year, possibly between May and September 2027. Unlike Intel's usual practice of leading with flagship parts, the top-tier 52-core SKU appears positioned above a normal flagship, aimed more at HEDT-style users.
Nvidia has officially confirmed it is acquiring Hugging Face for $12.93 billion, including up to $1 billion in equity incentives to retain staff. This follows Hugging Face previously turning down an Nvidia investment in order to stay independent.
Xiaomi's Poco brand has introduced the F9 Ultra, a midrange phone packing a 6.9-inch AMOLED screen with a 185Hz refresh rate, an 8,050mAh battery, and last year's Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 processor. The device also includes a 200MP main camera, 5x periscope telephoto, 100W wired charging, Bose-tuned sound, and a company spokesperson says pricing will land under $800 when it launches globally, though it won't be sold in the US.
Scientists from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and the University of Tsukuba built a solid-state cooling prototype that uses a shape-memory titanium-nickel film to convert heat directly into the mechanical motion needed to drive elastocaloric cooling, replacing the usual electric actuator. In tests, heating the actuator film to 86°C produced a 4.0 K temperature difference across the cooling device, and swapping in an external 130°C heat source still yielded a 2.2 K span, showing waste heat alone can power the cycle.
According to The Information, Nvidia has agreed to acquire open-source AI platform Hugging Face for approximately $12.9 billion, though Business Insider says talks are still ongoing without a signed deal. Hugging Face, often called the GitHub of AI, hosts over two million public models and 500,000 datasets used by 13 million developers, and generated about $150 million in annualized revenue.
According to The Information, Nvidia has agreed to acquire AI model-sharing platform Hugging Face for about $12.9 billion, though Business Insider says talks are still ongoing without a signed deal. Neither company has confirmed the reports publicly. The price would make it Nvidia's largest acquisition ever, well above the $7 billion it paid for Mellanox in 2020.
IBM unveiled a new processor at Hot Chips capable of natively running both Arm and IBM instruction sets on the same cores, the first product of its April 2026 partnership with Arm. Built on a 2nm process with 11 cores exceeding 5.7 GHz, the chip is designed to let future IBM Z and LinuxONE systems run Arm-native Linux alongside z/OS while retaining IBM's reliability, encryption and AI acceleration features.
IBM revealed a new mainframe processor at Hot Chips 2026 that lets a single core natively execute both Arm and IBM Z or LinuxONE instructions, rather than pairing separate cores for each architecture. Built on a 2nm process with 11 cores running above 5.7 GHz, the chip includes AI accelerators for fraud detection and a dedicated data processing unit for I/O. It is the first hardware result of IBM's April 2026 partnership with Arm, aimed at future IBM Z and LinuxONE systems.
IBM built a top-secret cryptographic computer called Harvest for the National Security Agency, which operated from the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 until the mid-1970s. The machine processed data up to 200 times faster than other computers of its era and included the first automated tape library, robotically retrieving magnetic tape cassettes on demand. IBM also created a custom programming language, Alpha, so analysts could describe cryptographic problems the way Fortran was used for scientific computation.