Articles by Luke James, Contributor

Luke is a freelance technology journalist who has been covering hardware and semiconductors since 2020. He began his career at All About Circuits and has since contributed to EE Power and Laptop Mag. Luke has a particular interest in semiconductors, microelectronics, and the industry shifts that shape the devices we use every day. Above all, he loves making complex technology accessible to experts and enthusiasts alike. Luke's interest in hardcore computing can be traced back to his university studies, when he responsibly spent his very first student loan payment on a custom-built gaming rig equipped with a GTX 780 Ti.

Articles by: Luke James

Amazon invests $50 billion in OpenAI, comitting to 2 gigawatts of Trainium silicon — AWS to become exclusive cloud distributor for Frontier enterprise platform

By Luke James published 27 February 26

Premium The investment is part of a $110 billion funding round that values OpenAI at $730 billion pre-money, with Nvidia and SoftBank each contributing $30 billion.

ISSCC 2026: AMD discloses how the Instinct MI355X doubled per-CU throughput despite lower compute unit count — 'We are actually matching the performance of the more expensive and complex GB200'

By Luke James published 27 February 26

Premium Taking to the stage at ISSCC, AMD’s Ramasamy Adaikkalavan talked through how AMD managed to fit nearly double the compute throughput into the same die area as its predecessor,

Rapidus secures $1.7 billion from Japan’s government and private investors for 2nm chip production — company says it is in active discussions with more than 60 potential customers

By Luke James published 27 February 26

Under the arrangement, the government will initially hold roughly 10% of Rapidus's voting shares and the majority of its stake in non-voting stock.

HP says memory costs doubled in one quarter, now account for 35% of PC build materials

By Luke James published 26 February 26

Interim CEO Bruce Broussard told investors the company has responded by securing long-term supply agreements for the year and has "qualified new suppliers".

Microsoft clarifies Windows 11 printer driver policy — support for legacy printers is not ending

By Luke James published 25 February 26

Microsoft confirmed today that Windows 11 is not ending support for legacy V3 and V4 printer drivers despite previous reports

Rare-earth mine in Bayan Obo, a mining town in Inner Mongolia in China.

Trump administration to use Pentagon AI to set mineral reference prices — gallium and germanium among first four targets

By Luke James published 25 February 26

The AI pricing tool purports to cut Chinese manipulation out of critical minerals markets.

The world’s first transatlantic fiber-optic cable is being ripped up after 37 years on the sea floor — TAT-8 to be removed after entering service in 1988, broke in 2002

By Luke James published 25 February 26

Subsea Environmental Services is currently hauling TAT-8 off the seabed near Portugal, more than two decades after it was decommissioned.

Apple’s 20,000-square-foot Advanced Manufacturing Center opens later this year.

Apple to produce Mac Minis in Houston for the first time — US chip sourcing tops 20 billion units

By Luke James published 24 February 26

Apple announced that it will begin producing the Mac Mini in Houston, Texas later this year, marking the first time that the compact desktop has ever been manufactured in the United States.

OpenAI couldn’t finance its data centers, so it took control of the hardware instead — company's chip design aspirations lag behind Google and Amazon

By Luke James published 24 February 26

Premium OpenAI spent much of 2025 trying to build its own AI data centers, only to find that it couldn’t secure financing on competitive terms.

German data center giant hikes prices up to 37% starting April 1 — Hetzner cites rising hardware costs for price increases

By Luke James published 23 February 26

German data center operator Hetzner announced today that it’s raising prices across its cloud, dedicated server, storage, and load balancer products starting April 1.

55 years ago, the first computer search warrant was issued — in February 1971, a Santa Clara judge authorized police to seize punch cards and a 'computer memory bank'

By Luke James published 22 February 26

In February 1971, an order authorized Oakland Police to enter offices in Palo Alto and homes in Menlo Park to look not just for papers but also for data stored on machines.

Intel shifts customer support to AI-powered assistant after scaling back phone support — “Ask Intel” system built on Microsoft Copilot Studio

By Luke James published 22 February 26

Intel has launched what it’s calling “Ask Intel,” a new AI-powered support assistant built with Microsoft Copilot Studio.

China’s AI build-out forces a rapid shift to liquid cooling — massive clusters put pressure on domestic suppliers to shift cooling methods

By Luke James published 19 February 26

Premium Dozens of Chinese companies have announced plans to expand into liquid-cooling systems as demand surges to prevent AI racks from overheating.

SoftBank’s $4.2bn OpenAI gain lifts quarterly profits as AI exposure deepens — company swings back to profitability in Q3 results

By Luke James published 16 February 26

Premium SoftBank swung back to profitability in its fiscal third quarter, reporting net income of 248.6 billion yuan — roughly $1.6 billion — for the three months ending December.

Rapidus targets mass 2nm chip production in 2027, quadruples capacity ramp up — company plans to scale to 25,000 wafer starts per month in just one year

By Luke James published 13 February 26

Premium Japan’s state-backed foundry Rapidus plans to begin production of 2nm-class semiconductors in the second half of its fiscal year 2027, with full-scale production expected in 2028.

OpenAI launches GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark on Cerebras chips — marks AI giants first production deployment away from Nvidia

By Luke James published 13 February 26

OpenAI on Thursday released GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark, its first AI model served on chips from Cerebras Systems, marking the ChatGPT maker’s first production deployment on non-Nvidia silicon.

Applied Materials to pay $252 million penalty for selling chipmaking tools to banned Chinese firm — settles over alleged 56 tool exports to chipmaker SMIC following Entity List designation

By Luke James published 12 February 26

Applied Materials must pay a $252 million civil penalty to settle allegations that it illegally exported semiconductor manufacturing equipment to SMIC subsidiaries.

Cadence embeds AI 'super agent' to assist engineers when designing EDA tools — company aims for ‘over a trillion transistors’ by 2030, with AI helping to debug and verify complex projects

By Luke James published 12 February 26

Premium “We’re easily going to get over a trillion transistors… in the package, by the end of the decade,” Cadence Senior Vice President Paul Cunningham claims.

Samsung and SK hynix shorten memory contracts as pricing power shifts back to suppliers — both companies now at 40-50% operating margins

By Luke James published 11 February 26

Premium Samsung and SK hynix have begun moving away from long-term, fixed-price supply contracts, replacing them with shorter agreements and post-settlement pricing mechanisms.

AI.com's $85 million Super Bowl ad campaign falls foul as traffic crashes servers — the campaign allegedly cost $15 million for the ads, $70 million for the domain name

By Luke James published 9 February 26

AI.com bought its way onto the biggest advertising stage in the world on Sunday night, and then the site crashed.

Nvidia says it didn't use pirated books to train its AI models — company asking for Anna's Archive suit to be dismissed

By Luke James published 8 February 26

Nvidia is pushing back against claims that it trained AI models on pirated books, telling a federal court that alleged contact with Anna’s Archive doesn’t amount to proof of copyright infringement.

Key to ultra-dense next-gen data storage could be a new magnetic state found in twisted 2D materials — German researchers reveal 'super‑moiré' magnetic milestone

By Luke James published 8 February 26

Researchers have identified unusual magnetism in twisted, two-dimensional chromium triiodide, revealing long-range spin textures that extend beyond the material’s underlying moiré pattern.

Microsoft purges Windows 11 printer drivers, putting millions of devices on borrowed time — legacy printers face extinction as Microsoft stops distributing V3 and V4 drivers

By Luke James published 7 February 26

Microsoft is preparing a significant change to how printers are supported in Windows 11, ending support for drivers that primarily support older hardware.

Amazon's European data centers challenged by grid delays — up to seven year waits for new connections

By Luke James published 6 February 26

Premium AWS is encountering grid connection wait times of up to seven years for new European projects, a delay that far exceeds the usual two-year timelines.

Russian 'Inspector' spacecraft intercepted communications from a dozen European satellites, report claims — fears Moscow could even manipulate trajectories or crash satellites

By Luke James published 6 February 26

European officials believe that two Russian “Inspector” SIGINT spacecraft operating in geostationary orbit have intercepted communications from at least a dozen European satellites.

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