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A small group of enthusiasts, including Pauli Rautakorpi, ZeptoBars, John McMaster and Fritzchens Fritz, have been sanding or dissolving chip packages to expose the bare silicon die and photographing it under a microscope. Their combined work, now totaling 356 processors dating from 1972 to 2024, has been compiled into a single browsable collection that lets users view each chip at true relative scale.
A local startup called Tau Robotics is trialing a humanoid robot that cleans homes while a human operator pilots it remotely using onboard cameras, rather than operating autonomously. A journalist who signed up for the waitlist had the robot sent to clean their apartment and reported both glitches and moments suggesting future potential. Separately, Samsung is expanding its Pyeongtaek, South Korea semiconductor campus, where three fabs run continuously, a fourth is starting up, and a fifth is under construction to meet AI-driven memory chip demand.
The Bluetooth Special Interest Group has announced Bluetooth High Data Throughput, a new feature within the upcoming Bluetooth Core 7.0 standard that raises maximum Bluetooth Low Energy bit rates to 7.5Mbps, roughly four times current LE 2M speeds. Devices supporting the new standard are expected to launch starting in 2027, with premium wireless earbuds likely among the first products.
The Bluetooth Special Interest Group has unveiled Bluetooth High Data Throughput, part of the upcoming Bluetooth Core 7.0 standard, which raises maximum bit rates to 7.5Mbps—four times faster than existing LE 2M technology. The group says compatible devices will begin reaching stores in 2027, starting with premium wireless earbuds before expanding to other products.
IEEE's TryEngineering program, now in its third year, ran educator professional-development sessions across the US and one in Cairo, Egypt, teaching 54 preuniversity teachers about artificial intelligence, semiconductor technology, and the engineering design process. Sessions were hosted at university and industry facilities, including the Florida Semiconductor Institute and a SkyWater Technology chip plant, and included lesson plans like Making of a Microchip and Working With Wind Energy. Additional workshops are planned this year in Greece and Guatemala.
Intel stock suffered its worst one-day drop since 1974 on Friday, falling nearly 30 percent after the company's fourth-quarter revenue outlook missed Wall Street expectations despite beating Q3 earnings estimates. The slide shrank the value of the US government's 9.9 percent equity stake, acquired in August for $8.9 billion as part of a $100 billion semiconductor initiative, from almost $40 billion to under $30 billion.
US stocks swung from early-week gains to steep losses, with the Nasdaq falling 1.4% Thursday and nearly 3% Friday after weak tech earnings, ending the week down 2% and October down 5.3%. The S&P 500 dropped roughly 2% for the week while the Dow, buoyed by a shift into defensive stocks, lost under 1% weekly but gained 1.7% for the month. Chipmakers initially rallied on Anthropic's IPO filing and SK Hynix's record profit, but Intel's weak outlook sent its shares down more than 28% Friday, and Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh's hawkish comments on inflation added to investor unease.
Intel stock lost 30% of its value on Friday after the company issued a weak financial outlook, including a forecast that sales in its client computing group would drop over 20%. The slide erased nearly $150 billion from Intel's market cap and contributed to roughly $1 trillion wiped off the broader semiconductor sector, as measured by Benzinga's intraday estimates and a 9.14% drop in the PHLX Semiconductor Sector Index.
Intel shares fell more than 20% after the company warned that difficulties in the PC market, caused by elevated memory-chip prices, are expected to persist into 2028. The warning signals a longer-than-expected downturn for a core segment of Intel's business.
Malaysian customs officials seized 30 servers packed with advanced AI chips worth over $12 million at Kuala Lumpur airport's free trade zone on October 15, after discovering the shipment was falsely declared as ordinary electronics. Officials say the shipment originated in one Asian country and was headed to another, using Malaysia as a transit point, and they believe it's linked to the same smuggling network behind a similar $13 million seizure in June and other cases totaling over $25 million.
Researchers used terahertz, millimetre-wave conductivity, and photoluminescence probes to track photoexcited charge carriers in bismuth sulfide (Bi2S3) thin films over timescales from 200 femtoseconds to 1 microsecond. They found that most carriers recombine within about 100 nanoseconds via defect-mediated trapping, while at higher excitation intensities and shorter picosecond timescales, an intrinsic electron-hole recombination process dominates. The team modeled these combined behaviors using a rate equation that separates defect-related and intrinsic recombination contributions.
Reports indicate Micron is stepping back from developing 4F² DRAM cell designs even as rival memory makers continue investing in the technology. The move marks a divergence in approach among major DRAM manufacturers over next-generation memory scaling techniques.