Summary of Week 8 – February 16-20, 2026
Week 8 highlighted several strategic moves in the data‑storage and AI hardware market. IBM launched an autonomous storage portfolio—FlashSystem 5600, 7600, 9600—powered by agentic AI, while AMD and TCS announced a 200 MW Helios rack‑scale AI deployment in India. Financially, AMD posted a 34 % YoY revenue jump to $34.6 B, contrasting Intel’s slight decline, and Western Digital added a $4 B share‑repurchase program after reporting 25 % YoY revenue growth. The week also saw Anthropic secure $30 B in Series G funding, underscoring continued investor appetite for generative‑AI ventures.
Astera Labs Acquired Pliops
Astera Labs announced the acquisition of Pliops, paving the way for its first research and development center in Israel. The move, confirmed by former Pliops CRO Marius Tudor, expands Astera’s global footprint and aligns with its strategy to accelerate AI‑connectivity...
Crusoe Launches Command Center: A Unified Operations Platform for High-Performance AI Workloads
Crusoe unveiled Command Center, a unified operations platform that consolidates GPU telemetry, logging, and orchestration for high‑performance AI workloads. The solution offers out‑of‑the‑box metrics, custom metric ingestion, and topology‑aware views, while integrating tightly with Crusoe Managed Kubernetes, Slurm, and AutoClusters....
Micrologic Partners with Cohesity to Become the Leading Sovereign Cloud Data Protection Solution in Canada
Micrologic, a Canadian sovereign‑cloud provider, has teamed with AI‑driven data‑security firm Cohesity to launch a fully Canadian‑jurisdictional data‑protection platform. The joint solution combines Micrologic’s Canada‑only cloud infrastructure with Cohesity’s backup, disaster‑recovery and isolated recovery environment technology. It promises recovery speeds...
Ax3.ai Appoints Marius Tudor as Chief Revenue Officer to Accelerate Global Growth
Ax3.ai appointed Marius Tudor as Chief Revenue Officer to lead its global go‑to‑market strategy. Tudor brings more than 25 years of technical sales experience in infrastructure and hardware. He will expand direct sales channels, strengthen the partner ecosystem, and target...
Lam Research Deepens Investment in Boise, Idaho, to Support Projected Growth in U.S. Semiconductor Manufacturing
Lam Research inaugurated a new 9,200‑sq‑ft office in Boise, Idaho, staffed initially by about 150 employees focused on research, development and high‑volume manufacturing for Micron’s memory technology. The facility underscores Lam’s multi‑year strategy to expand U.S. operations and accelerate chip...
Internet, Reinvented : Reticulum Networking Bridges Radios, Wi-Fi & Ethernet
Reticulum is an open‑source, decentralized networking protocol that operates without traditional internet infrastructure. It uses cryptographic identity‑based addressing and built‑in encryption to secure traffic across any medium, from LoRa radios to Wi‑Fi and Ethernet. Its hardware‑agnostic design lets users build...
Nanophotonic Color Router Solves Smartphone Camera Angle Problem
Korean researchers at KAIST and Hanyang University have created a metamaterial‑based nanophotonic color router that retains about 78 % optical efficiency across a ±12‑degree angle of incidence. The device separates red, green, and blue light directly on the sensor, addressing the...
Decathlon Launches New Version of Rockrider E-ACTV 500 Hybrid E-Bike
Decathlon has introduced a new Peach Orange colourway for its Rockrider E‑ACTV 500 hybrid e‑bike, now available in France, the Netherlands and Spain. The bike retains its €1,999.99 price point, while older colour options in Spain have been discounted to €1,799.99....
Red Hat Releases Tuned 2.27 For Adaptively Tuning Linux To Different Workloads
Red Hat has released Tuned 2.27, the latest version of its open‑source tuning framework for Linux. The update adds CPU partitioning autodetection, a systemd workaround, and enables CPU boost in performance profiles. It also introduces OpenShift‑specific TCP optimizations, forces SAP HANA latency...
Silex SX-SDMAX6E Tri-Band Wi-Fi 6E + Bluetooth LE Module Features NXP IW623 SoC, Comes in M.2 or LGA Package
NXP and Silex Technology have released the SX‑SDMAX6E module, embedding the IW623 tri‑band Wi‑Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.x radios for industrial IoT. The module ships in a 44‑pin LGA package and an M.2 2230 Key‑E card, supporting SDIO for Wi‑Fi and UART for Bluetooth....
From HPC Experiments to a Movement: The Rise of SimOps in HPC
In 2012 the UberCloud team launched a public call for engineers to test real‑world simulations on remote HPC resources, sparking a decade‑long series of cloud‑based experiments. Early case studies showed modest success rates, but the 2015 introduction of purpose‑built HPC...
AMD VEK385 Versal AI Edge Gen 2 FPGA Evaluation Kit Plugs Directly Into a PCIe Gen5/Gen4 Slot
AMD unveiled the VEK385 evaluation kit built around the Versal AI Edge Gen 2 XC2VE3858 SoC FPGA. The board combines eight Cortex‑A78AE cores, ten Cortex‑R52 cores, a Mali‑G78AE GPU, 144 AI Engine‑ML v2 tiles delivering up to 184 INT8 TOPS, and 20 GB...
Atom E3950 Powers WINSYSTEMS SBC-ZETA-3950 Rugged Mini SBC
WINSYSTEMS introduced the SBC‑ZETA‑3950, a rugged mini single‑board computer built around Intel’s Atom Apollo Lake E3950 quad‑core processor. Housed in an 84 × 55 mm carrier, it delivers 1.6 GHz base speed (up to 2.0 GHz burst) within a 12 W power envelope and includes 8 GB...
ASRock Launches NUC Ultra 300 Box Series with up to 16 Cores and 128 GB DDR5
ASRock Industrial unveiled the NUC Ultra 300 Box series, a new line of compact mini PCs built on Intel’s Core Ultra 300 platform. The lineup offers two processor options – the Core Ultra 5 325 and the higher‑end Core Ultra X7 358H – delivering up to 16 cores and...
Europe’s Smartphone Market in 2025: Apple Takes the Lead, but Rising Memory Prices Threaten Growth
Europe’s smartphone market posted modest 2% Q4 growth in 2025, driven by strong premium demand. Apple’s iPhone 17 launch lifted its share to 33%, overtaking Samsung, which held 29%. Honor posted an 18% rise in the mid‑range segment, while Xiaomi slipped...
NVIDIA’s Blackwell Ultra GB300 Sets New Standards in Long-Context Inference and Significantly Outperforms GB200
NVIDIA unveiled the Blackwell Ultra GB300 NVL72 rack, targeting long‑context inference for agentic AI models. Benchmarks show a 1.4‑1.5× performance uplift over the GB200, with a peak throughput of 226.2 tokens per second and latency gains of roughly 1.58×. The gains...
AAEON UP Squared Series Gains Mainline Linux Support for 40-Pin GPIO in Linux 6.18
AAEON announced that its UP Squared series now enjoys full mainline Linux support for the 40‑pin Raspberry Pi‑compatible GPIO header in kernel 6.18, ending reliance on an out‑of‑tree DKMS driver. The upstream effort, led with Bootlin, rewrote the driver stack to use...
TSMC Process Simplification for Advanced Nodes
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) disclosed Patent US10692720B2, which merges advanced EUV lithography with a controlled angled‑etch step to achieve sub‑35 nm end‑to‑end spacing. The method replaces the traditional three‑step lithography/etch flow with a single exposure, dramatically simplifying the process for...
CEO Interview with Juniyali Nauriyal of Photonect
Photonect, a Rochester‑based photonics startup founded by CEO Juniyali Nauriyal, is commercializing a laser‑fusion, epoxy‑free fiber‑to‑chip attachment process. The technology, built around an oxide mode converter, lifts coupling efficiency from roughly 50 % to 80 % and cuts optical loss to under...
Shark-Inspired Electronic Skin Gives Robotic Hands the Ability to Sense Objects without Touching Them
Researchers at Harbin Institute of Technology have created a shark‑inspired electronic skin that combines electrostatic non‑contact scanning with tactile triboelectric sensing. By embedding a pre‑charged ePTFE electret within a stretchable Ecoflex matrix, the e‑skin amplifies the electric field, achieving detectable...
Best Smartphone Camera of 2026: These Galaxy S26 Ultra Alternatives Could Make Samsung's Life Difficult
Samsung’s Galaxy S26 Ultra arrives on February 25, 2026 with modest camera upgrades and new AI‑driven features. Leaks reveal that Chinese rivals—Xiaomi 17 Ultra, Oppo Find X9 Ultra, and Vivo X300 Ultra—offer larger sensors, higher‑resolution modules, and specialist optics. Each...
Inside a Compact Intel 3000 W Water-Cooled Power Supply
Intel’s reference 3 kW server power supply packs 3000 W into a compact chassis by employing a water‑cooled block between two large PCBs. The unit achieves 80 Plus Platinum efficiency using an interleaved totem‑pole PFC stage with 600 V GaN FETs and a phase‑shifted...
AMD Zen 6 Performance Events & Metrics Merged For Linux 7.0
Linux 7.0’s merge window added full support for AMD Zen 6 performance events, covering core, uncore and metric counters. The patch set also fixes Zen 5 MAC allocation events and introduces a new perf sched stats tool for scheduler profiling. These updates enable developers...
Yet Another Fix Coming For Older AMD GPUs On Linux - Thanks To Valve Developer
Valve open‑source graphics engineer Timur Kristóf has released a patch for the AMDGPU driver that restores functionality to legacy Radeon GCN 1.1 GPUs found in older iMacs, such as the Radeon R9 M380. The fix disables the memory‑clock dynamic power management (MCLK DPM) and forces...
Linux 7.0 Further Prepares For Intel Diamond Rapids With NTB Driver Support
The upstream Linux kernel is largely ready for Intel’s upcoming Xeon Diamond Rapids processors. With the Linux 7.0 release, a new NTB driver adds support for the Gen6 non‑transparent bridge, enabling PCIe 6.0 inter‑CPU communication. Only a few dozen lines of...
Massive 38% Off: Get the Powerful ACEMAGIC K1 Intel Core I5-12600H Mini PC for Only $359.99
The ACEMAGIC K1 Mini PC, powered by an Intel Core i5‑12600H, 16 GB DDR4 RAM, and a 512 GB SSD, now sells for $359.99 after a 38% discount and an extra promo code. Its hybrid‑core processor reaches 4.5 GHz and supports triple 4K...
What Google Isn’t Telling You About the Pixel 11 Pro XL
Google unveiled the Pixel 11 Pro XL, its newest flagship aimed at challenging Apple’s premium phones. The device introduces a 3D facial recognition system powered by Project Tuscana, paired with a fingerprint sensor for dual biometric security. Under the hood...
Turn a Broken Phone Into a DeX-Powered 1440p Mini PC for Under $100
A broken Samsung Galaxy S20 FE can be transformed into a DeX‑powered mini PC for under $100. By housing the phone in a modified Raspberry Pi case, adding a USB‑C to HDMI adapter, docking station, and active cooling, the setup delivers a...
7 Things I Can’t Wait to See at Next Week’s Biggest Phone Launch
Samsung’s Unpacked event on February 25 will unveil the Galaxy S26 Ultra, which sports noticeably thinner bezels, a flatter frame and a refined color palette. The flagship’s camera strategy pivots to a wider‑aperture 5× telephoto lens and a new image‑processing...
AMD Seemingly Stops Driver Updates for Ryzen Z1 Extreme Processor
AMD has apparently ceased driver updates for its 2023‑era Ryzen Z1 Extreme APU used in handheld consoles, leaving devices like the ASUS ROG Ally on drivers dating back to August 2025. The pause affects OEMs such as Lenovo and ASUS, which must validate drivers against...
This $119 Camera Won’t Let You See Your Photos
The Flashback ONE35 V2 is a $119 retro‑style digital camera that eliminates instant previews, limiting users to 27 shots and a 24‑hour post‑transfer delay. It upgrades to a 13‑megapixel sensor with improved low‑light performance and adds four built‑in film simulations....
If You Can’t Find the Fix, You Can’t Fix the Thing
iFixit highlights that most repair guides are written only in English, creating a barrier for non‑English speakers who need DIY instructions in their native language. The newly launched FixBot can answer repair questions in multiple languages, but it still points...
AOC Q27G4ZD Expands Gaming Series with 280 Hz QD-OLED and up to 1000 Nits Peak Brightness
The episode reviews AOC's new Q27G4ZD gaming monitor, a 27‑inch QD‑OLED panel that sits between the brand's 240 Hz and 360 Hz models with a 280 Hz refresh rate and QHD (2560×1440) resolution. It highlights the third‑generation QD‑OLED technology delivering 0.03 ms response, up...
ASUS RTX 5070 EVO Dual Targets SFF Builds With Short, Thinner Design
ASUS has expanded its Dual Evo lineup with the RTX 5070 Dual Evo and Dual Evo OC, packing a 12 GB RTX 5070 GPU into a compact 229 × 120 × 50 mm, 2.5‑slot chassis aimed at small‑form‑factor builds. The OC model raises boost clocks from...
Ericsson Goes with Custom Silicon (Rather than Nvidia GPUs) for AI RAN
Ahead of MWC Barcelona 2026 Ericsson unveiled its AI‑RAN portfolio, opting for purpose‑built ASIC silicon instead of Nvidia GPUs and confirming Intel as its only commercial silicon partner. The company highlighted a software‑defined approach that uses hardware abstraction layers to...
Suspected New Onn 4K Pro and Onn Streaming Stick From Walmart Pass Through FCC Approval
Walmart’s Onn brand is set to receive two new streaming devices after FCC filings identified a second‑generation 4K Pro set‑top box and a refreshed streaming stick. The 4K Pro (model JS620K4) upgrades to 32 GB storage, 3 GB RAM, Wi‑Fi 6 and adds...
Intel Hiring More Linux Developers - Including For GPU Drivers / Linux Gaming Stack
Intel announced six new engineering openings focused on its Linux graphics stack, including three GPU software development engineers tasked with enhancing Mesa, DRM kernel drivers, and the Linux gaming ecosystem such as Wine and Proton. Additional hires include middleware engineers...
Nothing Reinvents Its Glyph Notification Lights Again, This Time for the Phone (4a)
Nothing is set to launch its mid‑range Phone 4a, featuring a revamped Glyph Bar with six square lights and nine individually controllable mini‑LEDs that are 40% brighter than earlier A‑series versions. The new notification system replaces the previous strip‑based designs and...
Raspberry Pi RP2350 Microcontroller Overclocked to Run at More than 5X Original Frequency
The Raspberry Pi RP2350, launched in 2024 with dual Cortex‑M33 and Hazard3 RISC‑V cores capped at 150 MHz, has been pushed far beyond its spec. By disabling the internal regulator, raising voltage to 2.95 V and applying aggressive cooling, engineers achieved up to...
What Is the 3nm Pessimism Wall and Why Is It An Economic Crisis?
The article defines the “3 nm Pessimism Wall” as the excessive 25‑35% clock‑period guard bands that arise from abstraction‑based sign‑off methods rather than physical limits. These inflated margins force over‑design of buffers, increase power consumption, and waste silicon area, turning advanced‑node...
Linux 7.0 Shows Significant PostgreSQL Performance Gains On AMD EPYC
Early benchmarking of the Linux 7.0 kernel on an AMD EPYC Turin server revealed notable PostgreSQL performance gains compared with the stable 6.19 release. The tests used identical hardware, software stacks and compiler toolchains, isolating the kernel as the variable. While Intel Panther Lake...
CEO Interview with Aftkhar Aslam of yieldWerx
YieldWerx, led by semiconductor veteran Aftkhar Aslam, offers a data‑centric yield‑analytics platform that consolidates fragmented fab, test, and packaging information into a single, actionable environment. The solution tackles extreme data volumes and multi‑domain complexity, supporting advanced packaging, silicon photonics, MicroLED,...
Linux Begins Seeing Early Preparations For PCIe 7.0
Early Linux kernel patches for PCI Express 7.0 have been posted, outlining register definitions, speed detection, and basic bandwidth controls. PCIe 7.0, released by the PCI‑SIG in mid‑2025, doubles the raw data rate to 128 GT/s, enabling up to 512 GB/s bi‑directional throughput on...
Firewalla Orange Review: A Pocket-Sized Firewall That Followed Me to Tokyo
The Firewalla Orange is a 244‑gram, pocket‑sized firewall that turns any untrusted Wi‑Fi into a protected network in about ten minutes. In real‑world tests it delivered 1.72 Gbps wired throughput and 151 Mbps hotel Wi‑Fi speed while applying IPS, ad‑blocking and VPN...
Linux 7.0 Brings Apple Type-C PHY, Snapdragon X2 & Rockchip HDMI 2.1 FRL Additions
The Linux 7.0 kernel merge introduced a wave of new PHY drivers, notably adding mainline support for Apple Silicon USB‑C, Qualcomm Snapdragon X2, and several SoC‑specific interfaces. Qualcomm’s lineup now includes PCIe Gen4, DP/eDP, USB UNI, and UFS PHYs for the X2 and 8 Elite...
IBM Introduces Autonomous Storage with New FlashSystem Portfolio Powered by Agentic AI
IBM unveiled three new FlashSystem models—5600, 7600 and 9600—featuring the FlashSystem.ai suite and a 5th‑Gen FlashCore module. The AI‑driven services claim up to 90% reduction in manual storage management and up to 57% cost savings on the flagship 9600. Hardware‑accelerated...
Cisco Unveiled Silicon One G300, Advanced Systems and Optics to Power and Scale AI Data Centers for Agentic Era
Cisco unveiled its Silicon One G300 switch silicon, delivering 102.4 Tb/s of bandwidth to power gigawatt‑scale AI clusters. The G300 powers new N9000 and 8000 systems that use 100% liquid cooling and 1.6 Tb/s optics, boosting energy efficiency by up to 70% and...
Avalanche Technology Introduces Next-Gen VNX+ Storage Module for Space and Military Applications
Avalanche Technology unveiled its VNX+ storage module, combining Space Grade MRAM with Lattice’s CertusPro‑NX FPGA to deliver true radiation immunity without sacrificing density, speed, or endurance. The solution is engineered for military and Low Earth Orbit (LEO) applications and satisfies...
DesignCon 2026: Keysight to Showcase Advanced AI Data Center and High-Speed Interconnect Validation
Keysight Technologies will present end‑to‑end AI data‑center and high‑speed interconnect validation solutions at DesignCon 2026 in Santa Clara. The showcase includes a 3D chiplet design workflow, signal‑integrity testing up to 3.2 Tbps, DDR5 and GDDR7 memory validation, and PCIe 7.0 PAM4 performance verification....