Always Be Curious #264: AMD advances AI, Micron's HBM4, and ChatGPT loses to Atari 2600
This week in ABC: AMD's flagship event delivered a strong roadmap, Micron's shipped HBM4 samples ahead of competition, and ChatGPT is a bad chess player
Sup Curious Clan! ✌️
For a few years now, NVIDIA has sat comfortably atop the AI hardware throne, watching data centers worldwide fill with their GPUs like digital gold mines. Their architectures and scalable solutions have simply become the undisputed standard.
But AMD was never too far behind.
At this week’s Advancing AI event, AMD shared its AI chip roadmap and talked about their next-gen (2027) Instinct MI500 GPU accelerators and EPYC "Verano" CPUs. It’s pretty clear: AMD wants in on the AI gains. And that would certainly be healthy for the market! So AMD has made the MI500 series its direct answer to NVIDIA's Rubin architecture, promising performance parity while leveraging advanced packaging technologies like TSMC’s CoWoS-L technology. Meanwhile, the EPYC Verano CPUs, potentially powered by next-generation Zen 7 cores, will provide the computational backbone needed to challenge NVIDIA's integrated ecosystem.
And it’s not just individual chips. AMD's strategy extends to complete rack-scale solutions, exemplified by their new "Helio" AI server racks. These systems, built around MI400 accelerators and EPYC Venice CPUs, are also designed to compete directly with NVIDIA's “NVL144” AI racks. These are the workhorses of modern AI data centers. 💪
As these next-generation products hit the market in the coming years, the AI hardware landscape may finally see the competition it needs—and customers may finally have the choice they've been waiting for. 💰📉
Have a good week, stay safe and sound,
👨💻The round-up in sci-tech💡
♟️ ChatGPT just got 'absolutely wrecked' at chess, losing to a 1970s-era Atari 2600 (CNET)
All hail the Atari! 💪 An engineer's experiment yielded a surprising result for OpenAI's popular chatbot.
"It made enough blunders to get laughed out of a 3rd-grade chess club. ChatGPT got absolutely wrecked at the beginner level."
🤪 They asked an AI chatbot questions. The answers sent them spiraling (The New York Times)🎁
Generative A.I. chatbots are going down conspiratorial rabbit holes and endorsing wild, mystical belief systems. For some people, conversations with the technology can deeply distort reality.
🫠Nvidia CEO slams Anthropic's chief over his claims of AI taking half of jobs and being unsafe — Jensen says ‘Don’t do it in a dark room and tell me it’s safe’ (Tom’s Hardware)
Huang believes that AI technologies will open more career opportunities in the future.
🏸 Scientists built a badminton-playing robot with AI-powered skills (Ars Technica)
A lower latency visual system might be needed to make the robot more competitive.
💬 How 'griefbots' allow people to 'talk to the dead’(BBC)
BBC’s Tech Now explores the growing trend of 'griefbots' or 'deadbots' that allow people to 'talk to the dead'.
👨🎨 ASML's Impasto Project creates 3D digital twins of Vincent van Gogh's art with 100 gigabytes of data per scan — nanometer-capable chipmaking tech used to create ‘Google Maps for paintings’ (Tom’s Hardware)
Adapted chip tool scanner creates about 100GB data per painting.
❤️ Tiny human hearts grown in pig embryos for the first time (Nature)
The hearts started to beat in the pig–human hybrids, which survived for 21 days.
🥶 Strange radio pulses detected coming from ice in Antarctica (Phys.org)
In the words of my colleague Fatih: “It’s Megatron.” 🤣 A cosmic particle detector in Antarctica has emitted a series of bizarre signals that defy the current understanding of particle physics, according to an international research group that includes scientists from Penn State. The unusual radio pulses were detected by the Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA) experiment, a range of instruments flown on balloons high above Antarctica that are designed to detect radio waves from cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere.
🎮 Engineer creates first custom motherboard for 1990s PlayStation console (Ars Technica)
New “nsOne” board can save a dying 1990s PlayStation 1 by transplanting original chips.
🪱 The real story of Stuxnet (IEEE Spectrum)
I remember reading this story in 2013 when it came out. With the current state of the Middle East, it’s nice to re-read how Kaspersky Lab tracked down the malware that stymied Iran’s nuclear-fuel enrichment program.
🤓This week in chips⚠
🔥 AMD expected to break NVIDIA’s AI monopoly with next-gen Instinct MI500 Aaccelerators and EPYC "Verano" CPUs, set to compete against Vera Rubin lineup (wccftech)
AMD's latest moves in the AI market are too big to ignore, as the firm has now decided to challenge NVIDIA with its Instinct MI500 GPUs.
📈AMD says new chips can top Nvidia’s in booming AI chip fields (South China Morning Post)
The new instalments in AMD’s MI350 chip series are faster than Nvidia counterparts and represent major gains over earlier versions, Su said.
💪 AMD's MI350 is a big iterative advance (Semiaccurate)
At their Advancing AI conference, AMD announced the MI350/355 GPUs along with a few specs.
🌶️ Top researchers leave Intel to build startup with ‘the biggest, baddest CPU’ (Oregon Live)
“We see this opportunity, this light,” said CEO Debbie Marr. “We took our chances.”
🇺🇸💪 Micron starts to ship samples of HBM4 memory to clients — 36 GB capacity and bandwidth of 2 TB/s (Tom’s Hardware)
Ahead of rivals.
💰 Chipmaker Micron expands US investment to $200 bn backed by Trump (Techxplore)
Chip giant Micron Technology on Thursday said it was expanding its domestic investment plan to $200 billion as it seeks to boost US semiconductor manufacturing, with the backing of the Trump administration.
🥵 Inside one of the world's most advanced supercomputers (BBC)
BBC Tech Now explores how the latest generation of high-performance computing stays cool.
🧳 Chinese AI companies dodge U.S. chip curbs by flying suitcases of hard drives abroad (WSJ)🔐
Engineers carried data to countries where Nvidia chips are available, frustrating Washington’s efforts to restrict China’s access to the technology.
💡 Atom-thin tech replaces silicon in the world’s first 2D computer (Science Daily)
In a bold challenge to silicon s long-held dominance in electronics, Penn State researchers have built the world s first working CMOS computer entirely from atom-thin 2D materials. Using molybdenum disulfide and tungsten diselenide, they fabricated over 2,000 transistors capable of executing logic operations on a computer free of traditional silicon. While still in early stages, this breakthrough hints at an exciting future of slimmer, faster, and dramatically more energy-efficient electronics powered by materials just one atom thick.
✋ Plans to shrink particle accelerators by 1,000x could speed chipmaking by 15X - Inversion Semiconductor proposes 'tabletop' particle accelerators with petawatt lasers (Tom’s Hardware)
“On paper, Inversion Lithography's plans seem sound and the LWFA method of generating EUV radiation (or light) seems almost perfect. However, there are many caveats.”
📈By the numbers📉
💰 TSMC May revenue hits US$9.86 billion, year-to-date sales up over 42% amid strong AI demand (Digitimes)
TSMC reported consolidated revenue of US$9.86 billion for May 2025, down 8.3% from April but up 39.6% compared to May 2024. The company's cumulative revenue for the first five months of 2025 now marks a robust 42.6% year-over-year increase, placing its second-quarter performance on track to meet guidance.
❤️For the love of tech❤️
❤️ First-of-its-kind technology helps man with ALS ‘speak’ in real time (UC Davis)
UC Davis researchers have developed a faster brain-computer interface that can instantaneously translate brain activity into voice as a person tries to speak.
Always Be Curious is the personal newsletter of Sander Hofman, Senior Creative Content Strategist at ASML. Opinions expressed in this curated newsletter are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.