Articles by Chris Stokel-Walker, Freelance Contributor

Chris Stokel-Walker is a Tom's Hardware contributor who focuses on the tech sector and its impact on our daily lives—online and offline. He is the author of How AI Ate the World, published in 2024, as well as TikTok Boom, YouTubers, and The History of the Internet in Byte-Sized Chunks. Alongside his reporting, he teaches journalism at Newcastle University, and holds a PhD in journalism. Chris has been a journalist for more than a decade, reporting for the world’s biggest publications. He frequently appears on the BBC, CNN, ABC, Times Radio, and others to explain the latest tech news. You can learn more about him at stokel-walker.com, and can send him tips via Signal, at stokel.01.

Articles by: Chris Stokel-Walker

A chip under a scanner at the Center for Heterogeneous and Performance Scaling laboratory

AI is starting to out-design chip engineers in narrow areas as LLMs accelerate software chip design tool development — "There is still a lot of human guidance" says Berkley researcher

By Chris Stokel-Walker published 22 May 26

Premium Automated analysis and design, powered by AI, could help the chip design process… with caveats.

Guests look at a model of the largest data center in the UAE under construction in Abu Dhabi as the Stargate initiative.

The Middle East had everything data center builders and hyperscalers could wish for — then the Iran war happened

By Chris Stokel-Walker published 8 May 26

Premium Money was pouring into the region, as well as plenty from its own coffers, until the war.

America’s AI chip rules keep changing — and the rest of the world is paying the price

By Chris Stokel-Walker published 3 April 26

Premium What’s going on with Donald Trump’s attitude to AI chips, and how could it play out?

Nvidia Rubin Ultra with NVL576 Kyber racks and infrastructure

Shortages of crucial chip packaging material threatens AI accelerator supply chains — Nittobo's Fukushima plant is tripling capacity, but it'll take years before market

By Chris Stokel-Walker published 9 March 26

Premium The T-glass supply is becoming an issue for the AI revolution, and the market is unlikely to unwind until 2027 at the earliest.

Photonics and high-speed data movement is the next big AI bottleneck — following copper, power, DRAM, and NAND

By Chris Stokel-Walker published 3 February 26

Premium Generative AI is pushing demand in all areas of the industry, and data interconnects, such as Silicon Photonics, may well be the next big bottleneck that hyperscalers need to be paying attention to.

Chip scarcity assaults auto industry amid the worsening Nexperia and DRAM crisis — fragile sector rocked by undersupply, which may end worse than the 2021 shortage

By Chris Stokel-Walker published 5 January 26

Premium Automakers let their safety stocks dwindle just as chipmakers shifted focus to AI.

A deeper look at the tightened chipmaking supply chain, and where it may be headed in 2026 — "nobody's scaling up,” says analyst as industry remains conservative on capacity

By Chris Stokel-Walker published 2 January 26

Premium We interview two industry analysts to gauge the current state of the chipmaking ecosystem, including constraints across the entire supply chain, and where it might be headed next.

Why copper markets are feeling the pinch due to aggressive AI data center expansion — expansive buildout to demand 1.1 million tonnes of copper annually by 2030, close to 3% of global demand

By Chris Stokel-Walker published 5 December 25

Premium Alongside energy, water and computer chips, the supply squeeze is being felt further up the chain, too.

The web's infrastructure has a concentration problem, exposing us all to crushing outages — from AWS and Azure to Cloudflare, the perils of having a centralized internet are being felt by all

By Chris Stokel-Walker published 21 November 25

Premium First it was AWS. Then Azure went down – and with it, large chunks of the web, apps and services we use every day. Are hypescaler cloud providers a victim of their own success?

Massive AI data center buildouts are squeezing energy supplies — New energy methods are being explored as power demands are set to skyrocket

By Chris Stokel-Walker published 17 October 25

Premium A perfect storm of massive data centre buildout and new innovations in energy could materially change what our supplies look like in the future.

The state of Intel: What the company's $5 billion deal with Nvidia could mean for the floundering chipmaker — Investments, capex, and the beating heart of x86

By Chris Stokel-Walker published 26 September 25

Premium An eye-watering and mind-boggling deal saw computer chips’ new king supplant what used to be the old name in town – but what does it all mean for Intel?

How the AI revolution is triggering a hardware arms race and pushing up prices

By Chris Stokel-Walker published 22 August 25

Premium Tech giants and hyperscalers are paying billions to build out large data centers for AI, creating supply chain bottlenecks and intense competition for technological dominance.

The U.S. and China are engaged in a race over chip development — both countries are racing to build infrastructure

By Chris Stokel-Walker published 6 August 25

Premium Both superpowers are building up chip development capabilities while trying to reduce dependencies upon one another.

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