Hardware news

Apple’s new MacBook Pro is the first Mac with a touchscreen

The 14-inch and 16-inch models have an OLED screen, the Dynamic Island from the iPhone, and M5 Pro or M5 Max chips. They start at $2,899 and $3,399 and reach stores on November 6.

Apple announced a new MacBook Pro on October 28 with a touch display that it calls PROLED XDR. It is the first Mac that people can control by touching the screen. Orders opened the same day in 30 countries, Apple says. The new laptops sit above the cheaper M6 MacBook Pro that Apple announced a day earlier.

PC shipments fall 20% as AI demand lifts memory prices

IDC counts 62.7 million PCs shipped from July to September, and Omdia 58.1 million. Both say buyers stocked up early in the year to beat price rises, and HP and Dell fell the most.

Research firm IDC estimates that 62.7 million PCs were shipped worldwide in the third quarter, 20.1% fewer than a year earlier. Omdia counts 58.1 million, down 21.2%. Lenovo, HP, Dell and Apple all shipped fewer computers. IDC says high prices, driven by the building of AI data centres, are holding buyers back.

Amazon’s new Alexa Tablets run Android with Google Play

The three tablets cost from $229.99 to $499.99 and have Alexa+ built in. They ship on October 14 in the US, Canada and Mexico, and reviewers see them as the successors to Amazon’s Fire tablets.

Amazon announced three Alexa Tablets on October 8: the 12 Pro at $499.99, the 11 at $329.99 and the 8 at $229.99. They run Android with the full Google Play Store, and Alexa+, Amazon’s newer AI assistant, is built in. They ship on October 14 in North America and on October 19 in five European countries.

Microsoft’s RTX Spark Surface Laptop Ultra starts at $2,599

Preorders opened on October 7, and the laptop ships on October 16. A $5,999 desktop box with the same Nvidia chip follows in November in the US. No independent reviews exist yet.

Microsoft opened preorders for the Surface Laptop Ultra on October 7, from $2,599. It uses Nvidia’s RTX Spark chip and up to 128GB of memory shared by the processor and graphics. Microsoft says it can run AI models with more than 120 billion parameters on the laptop itself. The Surface RTX Spark Dev Box costs $5,999.

Nvidia adds a 64GB DGX Spark, from $4,999 at partners

The desktop AI computer keeps the same chip with half the memory, as memory prices soar. It goes on sale on October 23 from six PC makers.

Nvidia announced a 64GB version of its DGX Spark desktop AI computer on October 2. Systems from Acer, ASUS, Dell, Gigabyte, HP and MSI start at $4,999 and go on sale on October 23. Nvidia says one unit runs models of up to 100 billion parameters.

Broadcom made $16.7 billion from AI hardware in one quarter

Large cloud companies are buying custom AI chips and fast network equipment. This shows that the AI hardware boom is bigger than general-purpose GPUs alone.

Chiplets let companies build AI chips from smaller parts

Instead of making one very large chip, companies can connect several smaller parts in one package. Each part can have a different job.

Why memory speed can slow down the next AI models

Running AI models is getting cheaper, but moving data through memory is still difficult. Faster chips cannot help if they must wait for data.