'Twas The Night Before Tom's Christmas 2020

[Editor’s Note: The Tom’s Hardware staff first published a version of this poem in 2014 on Christmas Eve. We updated it a little bit and ran it again each year at the same time. The poem was given a complete overhaul in 2018 and 2019.

We understand that this holiday season follows a challenging year unlike any other, and wish you and your loved ones the best. In putting out this simple poem, we hope to spark a bit of joy. Thank you all for the support and participation you offer throughout the year, and we wish you Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year.]

'Twas the holiday season and where the elves roam,
All the PCs worked on Folding@Home.
Some folded protein for research assistance,
But the rest helped Santa give gifts from a distance.

He booted a Windows PC (that's one in a billion),
But his Excel rows counted a trillion.
So he ran XLOOKUP to match data with flair
From the comfort of his fifteen-hundred-buck chair.

Then he a got a drink from his Xbox fridge,
But he couldn't be late, not even a smidge.
The children had waited for presents for days,
Santa can't ape Intel's 7 nanometer delays!

Santa couldn't go into houses right now,
But he found a way to do his job anyhow.
He'd fly planes from Microsoft Flight Simulator
To deliver gifts from here to the equator.

And while this may sound silly or a little bit funny,
Santa Claus had to spend Lisa Su-level money
To buy all of the planes, the supplies and the wares
And he hadn't made much with his Corsair shares.

But the gifts this year were all very large
There were several PlayStation 5s in his charge,
And in the cargo hold he'd need to find spots
For RTX 3090s that take up three slots!

But he managed to get everything packed,
Like Zen 3 CPUs and some new M1 Macs,
And for those who need places to go rest their heads,
He readied embarrassing twin gamer beds.

Of course some companies bought gifts for themselves.
Nvidia grabbed Arm - that didn't need elves.
AMD took hold of Xilinx for $35 billion,
Bringing it to team red. (Or is it more vermillion?)

The planes took to the skies without any hitches,
And Microsoft patched most of its flight sim glitches.
They dumped Big Navi GPUs through the air
With RGB keyboards that were glowing like flares.

The only tech that didn't fall through the sky
Was that one Ryzen laptop that you couldn't buy,
So that Ryzen 7 4800U Yoga Slim 7
Was the one notebook that didn't rain from the heavens.

When Santa was almost done with his gift-giving spree,
The plane sprung a leak, like Windows XP.
He tried to land safely on the earth's ground floor
But crashed harder than Cyberpunk on PS4.

But Santa's moves at the flight stick were simply outstanding,
And he used the sim to pull off an emergency landing.

Santa couldn't stop when he'd gotten this far,
Luckily he'd included an emergency car.
That he could pilot remotely and control on a whim
With Razer's concept esports racing sim.

He felt every bump, every turn, every drift,
But his car helped deliver every last gift.
As the snowy weather started to worsen,
He said "next year I hope to do this in person."

Then he stood from his chair and he shouted "I did it!"
But no gifts for Huawei, the U.S. forbid it.
He went to go sleep; his energy hit rock bottom,
Tomorrow he'll build with parts Mrs. Claus bought him.

No matter what you’re celebrating this year,
Hanukkah, Kwanzaa or Christmas with cheer;
We at Tom’s Hardware wish you the best,
And we’ll be at our benches, running our tests.