Another modern maker discovers the charms of 1950s-era magnetic core memory.

South Korean giants Samsung and SK hynix have announced plans to invest about 1,350 trillion won, roughly $870 billion at the time of writing, into expanding semiconductor manufacturing capacity and data centers over the next ten years. This ten-year plan includes memory, storage, and logic, which both companies produce. For SK hynix, this investment will cover DRAM and NAND Flash, while for Samsung, it will cover DRAM, NAND Flash, as well as logic for its LSI division. The investment is so comprehensive that it will include more than just creating new fab production capacity for increased wafer output. For example, it will also encompass AI data centers, batteries, display manufacturing, chip-making tools, etching, photomasks, and much more.

It comes as regional rivals like Taiwan, China and Japan are investing heavily in chip factories and other technology.

I recently picked up an Atari VCS 800 and decided to do an unboxing and showing setting the system up for the first time. I also show playing some of the games that came with the system from the Atari Vault collection 1 and to be honest I failed miserably at them. Games from that era are ruthless and playing on a modern controller doesn't help. I definitely need a joystick controller and some more practice, but I wanted to show how bad I was because that is probably going to be most peoples experience if they have never played them before or if it has been a while. Also I really went into this blind, I bought the system off a whim and did very little research before setting it up, I thought there would be a whole bunch of Atari games already preloaded onto the system but it only comes with Atari classics vault 1.

At some point I will probably look into it more and see what other games I should get for it. I also want to get a m.2 SSD installed and run a Linux distro which will open up a lot of possibilities as far as games I can play on it. If you have any VCS exclusive games I should try out please let me know. If you have a VCS and are still playing it and loving it drop a Joystick Emoji 🕹️ in the comments.

Following the recent updates to the Keychron wireless keyboard line-up, with new ZMK firmware and mechanical and Hall effect models reaching gamers, Keychron has started to tease an upcoming version of its V6 keyboard that it is calling a next-gen keyboard architecture. The post on X revealing the keyboard's design and existence reveals that it will have TMR sensing technology, which is known to be more efficient than Hall-effect sensors, and a "Nova Socket architecture," with a hybrid platform. This all suggests that Keychron, which has long used TMR sensors in its wireless "HE" keyboard series, will leverage TMR sensors in order to support both mechanical and analogue magnetic switches.

Coming full circle LMAO

This is an abridged version of 2026 RISC-V Market Report and Ecosystem Guide by the SHDgroup, provided at no charge thanks to the support of their sponsors. An unabridged version is also available with over 200 pages and comes with a spreadsheet containing over 300 tables of detailed information. In both versions, the intention is to provide a comprehensive examination of the rapidly expanding semiconductor market, including how it is evolving alongside the concurrent emergence of RISC-V and the influence of AI. The accelerating build-out of data centers for AI inferencing and training and Large Language Models (LLMs) is having a profound impact on semiconductor revenues worldwide. This impact extends to the adoption of the RISC-V ISA in an increasing number of SoCs aimed at including some level of AI functionality in the silicon solution. These impacts also extend to the Semiconductor Intellectual Property (SIP) vendors as they look to accommodate the acceleration of the different Neural Networks being used and EDA Tool vendors as they look to infuse AI functionality into their EDA tools to aid the productivity of silicon designers.

The introduction of RISC-V has fueled extensive CPU architectural exploration, visibly impacting device revenues, unit shipments, design starts, business models and IP licensing revenues on a global basis. The pervasive integration of AI across applications is a primary catalyst in today's semiconductor market. The RISC-V architecture has notably influenced SoC designers and architects and is poised to drive a substantial share of designs, revenues, and unit shipments in the coming years.

Samsung is steadily working towards its goal of creating 1000-layer NAND Flash storage modules. However, as manufacturing complexities increase, the company cannot achieve this with a single chip. Instead, it is turning to advanced packaging solutions to stack two 450-layer V-NAND modules into a single 900-layer V-NAND chip. According to ET News, which first reported this manufacturing achievement, Samsung is using Cell Multi-Bonding (CMB) technology, a variant of wafer stacking achieved through hybrid bonding. This process forms a permanent bond between two silicon chips using embedded metal bumps that are fused together to create a single chip. Multiple dies, or in Samsung's case, multiple whole silicon wafers, can be connected by stacking two chip back ends together. Samsung's proprietary process, called CMB, paves the way for 1000-layer V-NAND chips by 2030.

Creative launched the Sound Blaster AE-X to its PCIe sound card lineup, following the Audigy FX Pro model that was introduced back in March. While the Audigy FX Pro was aimed at desktop users who are making the shift from onboard audio, the new Sound Blaster AE-X is aiming more towards gamers, audiophiles, and professionals. The sound card is equipped with the ESS ES9039Q2M dual-channel DAC, supporting playback up to 32-bit/384 kHz, a claimed 130dB SNR, and direct DSD256 decoding. The DSD256 (Quad-rate DSD) is an ultra-high-resolution digital audio format mostly used by those working with high-resolution lossless audio formats. Headphone amplification is done by the Creative X-amp discrete architecture, rated for headphones up to 600 ohms. This covers most high-end studio and audiophile headphones that tend to struggle with standard motherboard audio outputs. ASIO 2.3 (Audio Stream Input/Output) support is also included for low-latency recording and monitoring.

Scammers are counterfeiting memory chips made of fiberglass, selling useless DDR5 modules. First reports are coming from Japan.

In the world of Hall effect and TMR gaming keyboards, tactile switches are somewhat of a rarity, largely because the tactile bump somewhat defeats the object of having an adjustable actuation point. Despite this, Keychron has just announced not one, but two tactile magnetic switches for its Ultra-Fast Lime Magnetic Switch line-up: the Banana and Silent Banana switches. There is also a new Silent Red linear switch joining the two Banana variants and the original Lime linear switch. The new switches are available on Keychron's online store for $29.99 for a pack of 110 switches, which is very much on the affordable side of the spectrum, especially compared to the Gateron Magnetic Jade Emerald Heavy Tactile switch, which comes in at $59.50 for 70 switches or $76.50 for 90.

MetaX also posted strong growth, but remains unprofitable four months after its IPO.