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

Inside Google's TPU V8 strategy, delivering two chips for two crucial tasks at incredible scale — network scales up to 1 million TPUs per cluster, an advantage over Nvidia AI accelerators

By Luke James Published 27 April 26

Premium Google announced its eighth-gen TPUs at Cloud Next, shipping two distinct chip designs for the first time in the TPU program's decade-long history.

New AI data center in Utah will generate and consume more than twice the amount of power the entire state uses — Kevin O'Leary's 9 Gigawatt Utah data center campus approved

By Luke James Published 27 April 26

Utah's Military Installation Development Authority on Friday approved a development agreement for a hyperscale data center campus in Box Elder County.

Greg Kroah-Hartman's "Clanker T1000" bug hunting hardware.

Linux kernel's ‘second-in-command’ uses local AI bot to hunt bugs, powered by 'clanker' system with AMD's Ryzen AI Max+ — Framework Desktop has resulted in close to two dozen patches

By Luke James Published 27 April 26

Greg Kroah-Hartman posted a photo to Mastodon this weekend showing the hardware behind his AI-assisted bug-finding tool.

Chernobyl virus turned 27 today, and it could brick your PC in ways modern malware can't by overwriting BIOS firmware

By Luke James Published 26 April 26

27 years ago today, on April 26, 1999, a 1 KB virus called CIH detonated its payload on hundreds of thousands of Windows 9x machines worldwide.

DeepSeek launches 1.6 trillion parameter V4 on Huawei chips as U.S. escalates AI theft accusations — U.S. gov't alleges IP theft by DeepSeek and other Chinese AI firms

By Luke James Published 26 April 26

DeepSeek on Friday released a preview of its V4 large language model, the Hangzhou-based startup's most powerful to date.

Taiwan's stock market surpasses the UK's despite having less than a quarter of the UK's economy — AI boom propels Taiwan forward, TSMC alone accounts for more than 40% of Taiwan's total market value

By Luke James Published 26 April 26

Taiwan's stock market is now worth more than the United Kingdom's, in a shift driven almost entirely by the insatiable global appetite for AI chips.

CPU requirements for AI workloads are multiplying, driving intensifying shortages and price hikes — Intel already shifting production from consumer chips to Xeon as inference workloads drive server CPU ratios back toward parity with GPUs

By Luke James Published 24 April 26

As workloads continue migrating towards inference and agentic AI, CPU-GPU ratios could converge to 1:1 or even tilt further in favor of CPUs.

Bolt Graphics tapes out its first Zeus GPU test chip on TSMC 12nm — firm touts 17x lower cost of compute

By Luke James Published 23 April 26

Bolt Graphics has announced its completed tape-out of a test chip for its Zeus GPU, marking the startup's first move from FPGA emulation to manufactured silicon.

AI agent designs a complete RISC-V CPU from a 219-word spec sheet in just 12 hours — comparably simple design required 'many tens of billions of tokens'

By Luke James Published 23 April 26

AI chip design startup Verkor.io claims that its agentic AI system, Design Conductor, has autonomously produced a complete RISC-V CPU core.

Ransomware negotiator pleads guilty after leaking victims' insurance details to 'BlackCat' hackers — perp gave attackers a precise picture of exactly how much each target could afford to pay

By Luke James Published 22 April 26

Martino, of Land O’Lakes, Florida, is the third and final member of a trio of cybersecurity professionals charged in the scheme.

Congress moves to strip the DoC of chip-export discretion with the MATCH Act — DUV lithography machines among those targeted in chipmaking tool crackdown

By Luke James Published 22 April 26

Premium A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers introduced the Multilateral Alignment of Technology Controls on Hardware Act, or MATCH Act, in early April.

Anthropic's Model Context Protocol includes a critical remote code execution vulnerability — newly discovered exploit puts 200,000 AI servers at risk

By Luke James Published 22 April 26

Researchers at OX Security have exposed an architectural vulnerability in Anthropic's Model Context Protocol that allows for remote code execution on affected systems.

Iran claims US exploited networking equipment backdoors during strikes — says devices from Cisco and others failed despite blackout in attack that 'indicates deep sabotage'

By Luke James Published 22 April 26

Iranian state media has alleged that equipment from Cisco, Juniper, Fortinet, and MikroTik failed during U.S. and Israeli military operations against Iran.

A person playing a retro game on their Steam Deck via Polymega Remix.

Polymega Remix can digitize retro games for Windows 11 PCs and handhelds, USB peripheral accepts games CDs, cartridges — $199 units finally ship next month following years of production delays

By Luke James Published 21 April 26

Playmaji has opened pre-orders for its $199 USB peripheral that lets owners digitize and play physical retro games on Windows 11 PCs, laptops, and PC gaming handhelds