Engadget review recap: The Pixel 9a, smart glasses and AMD's latest CPU
This installment of our reviews roundup goes in several different directions. We've got an excellent Android phone, some smart glasses and a powerful CPU. Plus, we revisited our old pal the iPhone 16 Pro and offer up a spoiler-free review of The Last of Us season two. There's plenty to catch up on, so keep scrolling to see what our reviews team has been up to over the last few weeks.
There's a lot to like about the Pixel 9a. In fact, senior reviews writer Sam Rutherford argues it's the best Android phone you can buy right now in terms of pure value. "I would love to see Google add a true telephoto lens and its charging speeds (both wired and wireless) could be better," he writes. "But for $500, Google's most budget-friendly phone covers all the bases and then some."
If you're looking for a pair of smart glasses that are more practical instead of being a content capture device, Even Realities' G1 might be for you. The device impressed senior editor Daniel Cooper, but the caveats will be dealbreakers for some people. "I really like Even Realities' G1 for what they can do right now, but I'm also hopeful that it'll get far more useful in the future," he explains. "It seems to me there are so many things that could be tweaked, primped and plumped to make these far more appealing."
The latest AMD Ryzen CPU is a powerhouse, but it comes with a steep price tag. "After releasing a pair of excellent midrange GPUs, which showed that the company can genuinely go toe-to-toe with NVIDIA, this CPU and its accompanying 3D V-Cache technology is a reminder of how AMD is far ahead of Intel in many ways," senior editor Devindra Hardawar says. "While it's certainly not the best deal around, if you can afford it, the 9950X3D is the best desktop CPU you can buy today."
We're revisiting big devices about six months after their initial release to see how things are progressing. UK bureau chief Mat Smith recently put the iPhone 16 Pro through its paces again, noting that Apple Intelligence remains a disappointment. Deputy news editor Nathan Ingraham got early access to The Last of Us ahead of the season two premiere this weekend. He explains that the show navigates a rough patch in the source material with relative ease, and his review won't spoil the new episodes.
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CNN
2 hours ago
- CNN
Why this key chip technology is crucial to the AI race between the US and China
In the largest single foreign investment in US history, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company has unveiled a $100 billion investment, drawing global attention and prompting concern in Taiwan. TSMC, which produces more than 90% of the world's advanced semiconductor chips that power everything from smartphones and artificial intelligence (AI) applications to weapons, will build two new advanced packaging facilities in Arizona, among others. Here's everything you need to know about advanced packaging technology, which has seen exponential demand growth along with the global AI frenzy, and what that means for the struggle between the US and China for AI dominance. While the two countries have announced a temporary truce that rolled back disruptive three-digit tariffs for 90 days, the relationship remains tense because of ongoing feuding over chip restrictions imposed by the US and other issues. Last month at Computex, an annual trade show in Taipei that has been thrust under the limelight because of the AI boom, the CEO of chipmaker Nvidia, Jensen Huang, told reporters that 'the importance of advanced packaging for AI is very high,' proclaiming that 'no one has pushed advanced packaging harder than me.' Packaging generally refers to one of the manufacturing processes of semiconductor chips, which means sealing a chip inside a protective casing and mounting it to the motherboard that goes into an electronic device. Advanced packaging, specifically, refers to techniques that allow more chips — such as graphic processing units (GPU), central processing units (CPU) or high bandwidth memory (HBM) — to be placed closer together, leading to better overall performance, faster transmission of data and lower energy consumption. Think of these chips as different departments within a company. The closer these departments are to each other, the easier it is, and less time it takes, for people to travel between them and exchange ideas, and the more efficient the operation becomes. 'You're trying to put the chips as close together as possible, and you're also putting in different solutions to make the connection between the chips very easy,' Dan Nystedt, vice president of Asia-based private investment firm TrioOrient, told CNN. In a way, advanced packaging keeps afloat Moore's Law, the idea that the number of transistors on microchips would double every two years, as breakthroughs in the chip fabrication process become increasingly costly and more difficult. While there are many types of advanced packaging technologies, CoWoS, short for Chips-on-Wafer-on-Substrate and invented by TSMC, is arguably the best known that was thrown under the limelight since the debut of OpenAI's ChatGPT, which sparked the AI frenzy. It has even become a household name in Taiwan, prompting Lisa Su, CEO of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), to say that the island is the 'only place that you can say CoWoS and everybody would understand.' Advanced packaging has become a big deal in the tech world because it ensures AI applications, which require a lot of complex computing, run without delays or glitches. CoWoS is indispensable to producing AI processors, such as the GPUs produced by Nvidia and AMD that are used in AI servers or data centers. 'You could call it the Nvidia packaging process if you want to. Almost anyone making AI chips is using the CoWoS process,' said Nystedt. That is why demand for CoWoS technology has skyrocketed. As a result, TSMC is scrambling to ramp up production capacity. In a visit to Taiwan in January, Huang told reporters that the amount of advanced packaging capacity currently available was 'probably four times' what it was less than two years ago. 'The technology of packaging is very important to the future of computing,' he said. 'We now need to have very complicated advanced packaging to put many chips together into one giant chip.' If advanced fabrication is one piece of the puzzle in terms of chip manufacturing, advanced packaging is another. Analysts say having both pieces of that jigsaw in Arizona means the US will have a 'one-stop shop' for chip production and a strengthened position for its AI arsenal, benefitting Apple, Nvidia, AMD, Qualcomm and Broadcom, some of TSMC's top clients. 'It ensures that the US has a complete supply chain from advanced manufacturing to advanced packaging, which would benefit the US' competitiveness in AI chips,' Eric Chen, an analyst with market research firm Digitimes Research, told CNN. Because advanced packaging technologies key to AI are currently only produced in Taiwan, having it in Arizona also reduces potential supply chain risks. 'Instead of having all eggs in one basket, CoWoS would be in Taiwan and also the US, and that makes you feel more safe and secure,' said Nystedt. While CoWoS got its moment recently, the technology has actually existed for at least 15 years. It was the brainchild of a team of engineers led by Chiang Shang-yi, who served two stints at TSMC and retired from the company as its co-chief operating officer. Chiang first proposed developing the technology in 2009 in an attempt to fit more transistors into chips and solve bottlenecks in performance. But when it was developed, few companies took up the technology because of the high cost associated with it. 'I only had one customer … I really became a joke (in the company), and there was so much pressure on me,' he recalled in a 2022 oral history project recorded for the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. But the AI boom turned CoWoS around, making it one of the most popular technologies. 'The result was beyond our original expectation,' Chiang said. In the global semiconductor supply chain, companies that specialize in packaging and testing services are referred to as outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) firms. In addition to TSMC, South Korea's Samsung and America's Intel, as well as OSAT firms including China's JCET Group, America's Amkor and Taiwan's ASE Group and SPIL are all key players in advanced packaging technologies.
CNN
2 hours ago
- CNN
Why this key chip technology is crucial to the AI race between the US and China
In the largest single foreign investment in US history, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company has unveiled a $100 billion investment, drawing global attention and prompting concern in Taiwan. TSMC, which produces more than 90% of the world's advanced semiconductor chips that power everything from smartphones and artificial intelligence (AI) applications to weapons, will build two new advanced packaging facilities in Arizona, among others. Here's everything you need to know about advanced packaging technology, which has seen exponential demand growth along with the global AI frenzy, and what that means for the struggle between the US and China for AI dominance. While the two countries have announced a temporary truce that rolled back disruptive three-digit tariffs for 90 days, the relationship remains tense because of ongoing feuding over chip restrictions imposed by the US and other issues. Last month at Computex, an annual trade show in Taipei that has been thrust under the limelight because of the AI boom, the CEO of chipmaker Nvidia, Jensen Huang, told reporters that 'the importance of advanced packaging for AI is very high,' proclaiming that 'no one has pushed advanced packaging harder than me.' Packaging generally refers to one of the manufacturing processes of semiconductor chips, which means sealing a chip inside a protective casing and mounting it to the motherboard that goes into an electronic device. Advanced packaging, specifically, refers to techniques that allow more chips — such as graphic processing units (GPU), central processing units (CPU) or high bandwidth memory (HBM) — to be placed closer together, leading to better overall performance, faster transmission of data and lower energy consumption. Think of these chips as different departments within a company. The closer these departments are to each other, the easier it is, and less time it takes, for people to travel between them and exchange ideas, and the more efficient the operation becomes. 'You're trying to put the chips as close together as possible, and you're also putting in different solutions to make the connection between the chips very easy,' Dan Nystedt, vice president of Asia-based private investment firm TrioOrient, told CNN. In a way, advanced packaging keeps afloat Moore's Law, the idea that the number of transistors on microchips would double every two years, as breakthroughs in the chip fabrication process become increasingly costly and more difficult. While there are many types of advanced packaging technologies, CoWoS, short for Chips-on-Wafer-on-Substrate and invented by TSMC, is arguably the best known that was thrown under the limelight since the debut of OpenAI's ChatGPT, which sparked the AI frenzy. It has even become a household name in Taiwan, prompting Lisa Su, CEO of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), to say that the island is the 'only place that you can say CoWoS and everybody would understand.' Advanced packaging has become a big deal in the tech world because it ensures AI applications, which require a lot of complex computing, run without delays or glitches. CoWoS is indispensable to producing AI processors, such as the GPUs produced by Nvidia and AMD that are used in AI servers or data centers. 'You could call it the Nvidia packaging process if you want to. Almost anyone making AI chips is using the CoWoS process,' said Nystedt. That is why demand for CoWoS technology has skyrocketed. As a result, TSMC is scrambling to ramp up production capacity. In a visit to Taiwan in January, Huang told reporters that the amount of advanced packaging capacity currently available was 'probably four times' what it was less than two years ago. 'The technology of packaging is very important to the future of computing,' he said. 'We now need to have very complicated advanced packaging to put many chips together into one giant chip.' If advanced fabrication is one piece of the puzzle in terms of chip manufacturing, advanced packaging is another. Analysts say having both pieces of that jigsaw in Arizona means the US will have a 'one-stop shop' for chip production and a strengthened position for its AI arsenal, benefitting Apple, Nvidia, AMD, Qualcomm and Broadcom, some of TSMC's top clients. 'It ensures that the US has a complete supply chain from advanced manufacturing to advanced packaging, which would benefit the US' competitiveness in AI chips,' Eric Chen, an analyst with market research firm Digitimes Research, told CNN. Because advanced packaging technologies key to AI are currently only produced in Taiwan, having it in Arizona also reduces potential supply chain risks. 'Instead of having all eggs in one basket, CoWoS would be in Taiwan and also the US, and that makes you feel more safe and secure,' said Nystedt. While CoWoS got its moment recently, the technology has actually existed for at least 15 years. It was the brainchild of a team of engineers led by Chiang Shang-yi, who served two stints at TSMC and retired from the company as its co-chief operating officer. Chiang first proposed developing the technology in 2009 in an attempt to fit more transistors into chips and solve bottlenecks in performance. But when it was developed, few companies took up the technology because of the high cost associated with it. 'I only had one customer … I really became a joke (in the company), and there was so much pressure on me,' he recalled in a 2022 oral history project recorded for the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. But the AI boom turned CoWoS around, making it one of the most popular technologies. 'The result was beyond our original expectation,' Chiang said. In the global semiconductor supply chain, companies that specialize in packaging and testing services are referred to as outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) firms. In addition to TSMC, South Korea's Samsung and America's Intel, as well as OSAT firms including China's JCET Group, America's Amkor and Taiwan's ASE Group and SPIL are all key players in advanced packaging technologies.
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
Trump's Secret AI Strategy Uncovered: Tech Insider Reveals Hidden Role of Elon Musk
BALTIMORE, June 07, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- New briefing claims President Trump has quietly deployed the most advanced artificial intelligence system in U.S. history — and handed the keys to Elon Musk. In a recently surfaced briefing, tech entrepreneur and author James Altucher alleges that Donald Trump's first move back in the Oval Office was more than symbolic — it was tactical. According to Altucher, Trump's repeal of Biden's AI executive order set off a hidden chain reaction that gave Elon Musk the freedom to unleash a classified project known as Project Colossus — an AI facility located in Memphis, Tennessee that may now house the most powerful supercomputer on Earth. 'The Fastest Supercomputer on the Planet' 'It contains not just one or two… but 200,000 units of Nvidia's all-powerful AI chips… making it the most advanced AI facility known to man.' 'The fastest supercomputer on the planet.' — Jensen Huang, Nvidia CEO Altucher says the facility is growing fast — with rumors Musk plans to double its processing power within weeks. A Quiet Reversal. A Bold New Doctrine. 'In one of his FIRST acts as President… Donald Trump overturned Executive Order #14110.' That order — signed by Biden — had imposed regulatory constraints on advanced AI. Altucher claims the reversal was calculated, opening the door for private actors like Musk to move 'without delay or oversight.' Trump later followed with a $500 billion initiative dubbed Stargate, focused on expanding America's AI infrastructure. Beyond Chatbots — Toward Supremacy Altucher argues that what's being built isn't just faster software — it's a new class of intelligence entirely. 'AI 2.0… gives that knowledge to intelligent machines that I believe will solve our problems for us.' He says July 1 could mark a critical turning point, when Musk unveils a 10X expansion to Colossus — potentially redefining U.S. dominance in AI for decades. About James Altucher James Altucher is a computer scientist, bestselling author, and entrepreneur who has worked in AI for over 40 years. He has advised tech firms, built AI trading systems, and contributed to IBM's Deep Blue supercomputer project. His latest research focuses on the convergence of AI, national policy, and private innovation. Media Contact:Derek WarrenPublic Relations ManagerParadigm Press GroupEmail: dwarren@ in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
