We previously reported that Arm is considering making its own silicon, and that the British firm’s Japanese owner, SoftBank, was considering acquiring Ampere Computing, Arm's only independent server chip vendor, to make this a reality.
Ampere, based in Santa Clara, California and backed by Oracle, designs high-performance, energy-efficient processors optimized for AI and cloud workloads using the Arm compute platform.
An acquisition by SoftBank could shift Arm from simply licensing chip designs to manufacturing its own chips - putting it in direct competition with existing customers and expanding Arm’s footprint in the growing data center space.
Complementing Arm's design strengthsUp until now, the acquisition had only been a strong rumor, but it’s now finally confirmed that SoftBank will be buying Ampere Computing for $6.5 billion (approximately ¥973.0 billion).
The deal, announced on March 19, 2025, will make Ampere a wholly owned subsidiary through SoftBank’s investment arm, Silver Bands 6.
SoftBank Group already owns a majority stake in Arm, and an affiliated company, Arm Technology Investment Ltd, also holds an 8.08% stake in Ampere.
The transaction has already been approved by SBG’s Board of Directors but as always with these things it remains subject to regulatory approvals, including U.S. antitrust clearance and review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS).
In a statement, Softbank said, “Through this strategic alignment following the transaction, Ampere’s expertise in developing and taping out Arm-based chips can be integrated, complementing design strengths of Arm Holdings.”
It added that Ampere is expected to collaborate with “group companies, investees, and business partners.”
SoftBank said the purchase will be financed through borrowings from Mizuho Bank and others. The Raine Group is serving as financial adviser, with Morrison & Foerster providing legal counsel.
Ampere will continue operating under its current structure until the deal closes, which is expected to be in the latter half of 2025.
SoftBank previously acquired UK-based chip designer Graphcore for between $400 million and $500 million.
That company was once considered a potential rival to Nvidia and AMD, but fell on hard times after failing to capitalize on the AI boom.
It's not too much of a stretch to think that Softbank could integrate Ampere with Arm and Graphcore to build a more unified AI compute strategy across its portfolio.
You might also likeThis week was full of major announcements. Google showcased the (potentially) iPhone 16e beating Google Pixel 9a, we reviewed Assassin's Creed Shadow and loved it, and Nvidia showcased an actual Star Wars droid in real life.
To catch up on all that and more you can scroll down to see the week's seven biggest tech news stories that you don't want to have missed.
Once you're all up to speed check out our picks for the 7 new movies and TV shows to stream this weekend (March 22).
1. The Google Pixel 9a broke cover (Image credit: Google)Google took the covers off the Pixel 9a this week, finally giving us an official look at its latest budget phone. At a quick glance, you’ll probably not notice a huge amount of difference from the Pixel 8a, but look closer, and there are some neat changes.
For starters, the phone’s design has changed with flatter sides and a larger display - which is also brighter - along with a rear camera setup that eschews the pill-shaped design of the Pixel 9 and goes for modules that sit flusher with the phone’s rear.
Under the hood, you’ll find the Google-designed Tensor G4 chip ready to power many Google Gemini activities and generative AI tools. There’s a bigger battery as well. This all comes at the same price as the Pixel 9a’s predecessor, but there’s a slight caveat in that Google has delayed the release of the phone until sometime in April due to a mystery “component quality issue”.
2. We found the droid we've been looking forStar Wars’ droids just got one step closer to reality at Nvidia's GTC 2025 keynote as Blue joined Jenson Huang on stage to show off the company’s new Newton engine. The robot bounded onto the stage after attendees watched a simulated version of the droid digitally explore the surface of a sandy planet far, far away.
This virtual landscape is what Newton is all about. Rather than needing to actually build a robot and real environments with a wide range of surface designs and materials to train your robot, with Newton, you can instead construct everything digitally, run the simulation, and the AI will gradually learn how to navigate. Once you’ve trained the model virtually, you can upload that data to a real version of the robot, and like Neo training in The Matrix Blue, other bots instantly become experts.
During the keynote, Huang also showcased a bunch of new hardware for developing AI, more humanoid robots, and autonomous vehicle tech.
3. Pebble returned with two new smartwatches (Image credit: Core Devices)It’s a big week for retro gadget fans, as Pebble founder Eric Migicovsky’s new Core Devices company unveiled two new smartwatches running the now open-source Pebble OS. The Core 2 Duo is a low-power smartwatch with four buttons, some basic functionalities, an MIP black-and-white screen, and access to Pebble’s suite of 10,000 third-party apps.
The second watch, the Core Time 2, is an upgraded larger version with a color touchscreen and a heart rate monitor. Crucially, both watches last up to 30 days, an impressive 40 times the battery life of your average Apple Watch.
While both are limited runs, Migicovsky said he’ll “make more” if they do well. Available to pre-order now, both devices will be released in July.
4. We reviewed the LG C5 OLED TV The LG C5 delivers bold, vibrant and dynamic colors, as shown on Disney's Elemental. (Image credit: Future)We got our hands on one of 2025’s most anticipated TVs, the LG C5 OLED TV. The latest iteration in the ever-popular LG C-series, we spent a week with the C5, and spoiler alert; it’s fantastic.
Earning a full five out of five stars in our review, we loved the LG C5’s stunning picture quality, superb gaming performance, full suite of gaming features, and intuitive smart TV platform with some useful new AI tools. Even its built-in sound was solid!
To address the elephant in the room, no, it’s not that different from its predecessor, the LG C4, and while that’s around, the C5 looks overpriced. But, when the C4’s time is up, the C5 is a fantastic replacement and is already set to be one of the best TVs of 2025.
5. Deep Research went free to use (Image credit: Google)Deep Research is Google Gemini’s AI-powered research assistant. Rather than the usual search and response of the standard chatbot model, using Deep Research, Gemini puts together a full report on whatever you’ve asked it, including citations from sources that it analyzes.
It works best if you throw really meaty questions that need it to consult multiple sources, like “What percentage of dogs in the US are puppies?“, for example. It comes up with a plan for what research it’s going to undertake, which you can edit, and then produces its report. It can take a few minutes for Gemini to assemble a Deep Research report, but when it does, you get a document you can open in Google Docs that covers the subject conclusively.
Best of all, Deep Research is now free to all Gemini users.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows is out now and is immediately one of our favorites in the entire series. Offering the best open-world role-playing game in that line of Creed games, Shadows gets an awful lot right and not wrong. And I should know, having spent more than 40 hours in the game now.
A major part of the game’s success is the implementation and execution of some of the best combat in the series. Both protagonists, Naoe and Yasuke, offer distinct styles of combat and a unique range of weapons they can use - but each can engage in seriously fluid, chunky, and hard-hitting combat. Whether you’re slashing at enemies with small blades as Naoe, or smashing them about the place with a Kanobo as Yusuke, the combat is Shadows is superb.
Ubisoft Quebec has also rethought world exploration and discovery with Shadows and implemented a much more rewarding and satisfying method of doing so. Instead of viewpoints revealing a sea of known entities in the landscape for you, Shadows only gives you a few points of interest and locations - unmarked, so you have to go and find out what they are. What results is a method of exploring the world that feels rewarding to explore and pulls you on from location to location, landscape to landscape, and region to region.
And while the main story wanes a little, and the Hideout mode that offers cozy base builders a little something can be a drain, there’s just so much to do in Shadows’ Feudal Japan setting that I’m going to be spending dozens more hours in it collecting tea sets, painting wildlife, meditating, learning new combos, carrying out contracts, and assassinating baddies.
7. Lego and Pokémon broke the internet (Image credit: Lego / Pokemon)Lego and Pokémon broke the internet this week when everybody’s favorite plastic bricks announced a partnership with the world’s most valuable media franchise. For years, we’ve hoped for a Pikachu collaboration with Lego, and now our dreams look set to become a reality.
Coming in 2026, perfectly timed with the 30th anniversary of Pokémon, you’ll be able to go on “a real LEGO® Pokémon™ adventure." While we don’t know what LEGO sets will be made available, the teaser trailer showcased Pikachu’s tail, so Pokémon’s mascot is almost a certainty.
We wouldn’t be surprised to see regular releases celebrating the extensive library of Pokémon; after all, there are now over 1,000 species dating back to 1996. With Generation 10 on the horizon and new Nintendo Switch video games set for release this year, it’s definitely an exciting time to be a Pokémon fan.
Subsea fibre optic cables are a crucial part of global internet infrastructure, yet recent damage incidents in the Baltic Sea have raised concerns about their security.
Per the BBC, there are now efforts to mitigate the risk of sabotage by using a decades-old technique known as distributed acoustic sensing (DAS).
This approach detects disturbances in fibre optic signals by capturing tiny reflections sent back along the strands due to pulses from light encountering vibrations or temperature changes, allowing the system to identify suspicious activity such as underwater drones, vessels dragging anchors, or divers near critical cables.
How fibre optics can 'listen' for threatsAs with network security, where businesses rely on the best small business routers to prevent cyber threats, monitoring solutions for subsea infrastructure are becoming essential in safeguarding global communications.
Lane Burdette, a research analyst at TeleGeography, notes that the number of faults affecting subsea cables each year has remained steady, typically between 1 and 200. "Cables break all the time…The number of cable faults per year has really held steady over the last several years."
During tests conducted by AP Sensing, the system detected a diver patting a cable on the seabed, while further experiments demonstrated its ability to identify drones and vessels, potentially providing early warnings of sabotage attempts.
"He stops and just touches the cable lightly, you clearly see the signal...The acoustic energy which travels through the fibre is basically disturbing our signal. We can measure this disturbance," says Daniel Gerwig, global sales manager at AP Sensing, a German technology company.
Just as businesses depend on the best business smartphones for real-time alerts and security updates, early warning systems for subsea cables can provide critical intelligence to prevent disruptions.
Concerns over the vulnerability of these cables have led NATO to launch "Baltic Sentry," a mission using warships, drones, and aircraft to monitor activity in the region, but since constant surveillance is not always possible, demand for fibre optic acoustic sensing solutions is growing.
"It's good that Nato and the European Union have woken up…The question is how quickly you could establish contact with a vessel," said Thorsten Benner, co-founder and director of the Global Public Policy Institute.
Maintaining secure communications in this environment requires the same level of reliability as the best network switches, ensuring smooth data flow and minimal disruption.
Companies such as Optics11 and Viavi Solutions are seeing increased interest in their monitoring technology, which can be deployed on military submarines or along key underwater infrastructure routes.
AP Sensing’s system is already in use in parts of the North Sea, but the technology has limitations, requiring signal interrogation points at regular intervals along the cable and having a sensing range of only a few hundred metres, meaning it can detect nearby threats but is not a complete security solution on its own.
You may also likeNvidia is advancing its networking technology by integrating co-packaged optics (CPO) into its Quantum InfiniBand and Spectrum Ethernet switch, a move expected to reduce power consumption and cost in AI data centers.
At its GTC 2025 event, Nvidia detailed its plans for deploying silicon photonics, which will enhance efficiency by reducing the need for traditional optical transceivers.
Instead of relying on traditional pluggable transceivers, Nvidia is embedding photonics directly into switch ASICs, cutting energy use and minimizing signal loss. These advancements benefit hyperscale AI, and could also improve small business routers with similar efficiency gains.
Nvidia seeks to cut AI data center power by over 50%.Nvidia’s Spectrum-X and Quantum-X switches use silicon photonics to deliver higher bandwidth and lower energy consumption, supporting up to 1.6 terabits per second (Tbps) per port to efficiently connect millions of GPUs.
The Quantum-X and Spectrum-X photonics switches offer configurations ranging from 128 ports at 800Gbps to 512 ports at 800Gbps, delivering total throughputs of up to 400Tbps.
While the Spectrum-X Ethernet platform enhances multi-tenant hyperscale deployments, the Quantum-X InfiniBand switches deliver superior signal integrity and resilience, making them contenders for the best network switch.
“AI factories are a new class of data centers with extreme scale, and networking infrastructure must be reinvented to keep pace. By integrating silicon photonics directly into switches, NVIDIA is shattering the old limitations of hyperscale and enterprise networks and opening the gate to million-GPU AI factories,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA.
Nvidia’s new switches improve energy efficiency by a factor of 3.5, while also reducing signal degradation. In a typical AI data center with 400,000 GPUs, conventional networking setups require millions of optical transceivers, consuming significant power.
Nvidia’s approach reduces total network power from 72 megawatts to 21.6 megawatts, dramatically improving sustainability. These gains could also enhance business smartphones, enabling faster, more reliable connectivity.
While Nvidia is transitioning towards optical networking, copper remains relevant in specific configurations.
Systems like the GB200 NVL72 still use thousands of copper cables to link GPUs and CPUs via NVLink 5, offering lower power consumption at the rack level.
However, as Nvidia progresses to NVLink 6, copper’s limitations will become more apparent, reinforcing the need for photonic solutions in large-scale AI tool deployments.
Nvidia’s new switches are set for release in late 202 and 2026. The first model, the Quantum 3450-LD InfiniBand switch, launching in late 2025, will provide 144 ports of 800 Gb/sec connectivity and a total bandwidth of 115 Tb/sec.
In 2026, the Spectrum SN6810 Ethernet switch will debut with 128 ports at 800 Gb/sec and an aggregate bandwidth of 102.4 Tb/sec. A larger Spectrum SN6800 model, will also arrive in 2026, featuring 512 ports of 800 Gb/sec and a total throughput of 409.6 Tb/sec.
Via Nextplatform
You may also likeUperfect has introduced a fresh take on multi-screen monitors for programming, with its stacked dual-screen design, which opens vertically via precision hinges with a 360-degree folding capability, allowing the display to be folded, unfolded, or flipped.
Uperfect says each portable monitor with 23.8-inch panels has a 1920 x 1080 resolution, and a refresh rate of 100Hz.
The Uperfect Delta Mega saves desk space with its built-in stand, which allows for height and angle adjustments while also supporting VESA mounting for flexible setups.
Design, connectivity and ease of useThe Uperfect 23.8-inch dual foldable display supports vertical stacking of two screens, providing an ergonomic advantage and reducing the need for excessive head movements, making it one of the best monitors for trading, or for running video editing software.
The monitors don't include touch functionality, but can be adjusted. When fully extended, they function as a traditional dual-monitor setup, while folding creates a compact, book-like view suitable for presentations, or an immersive reading experience.
One of the standout features is the single-cable connection via USB-C, there's also HDMI, built-in speakers, and a 3.5mm headphone port.
The Uperfect 23.8-inch dual foldable display is currently listed at $649.99, reflecting a significant $550 discount from its original $1,199.99 price.
You may also likeApple’s Mac Studio with the M3 Ultra chip has demonstrated a capability that no other personal computer can match, running the DeepSeek R1 AI tool with 671 billion parameters entirely in memory.
A test by YouTube reviewer Dave2D showed despite using a 4-bit quantized version of the model, it retained its full parameter count and performed smoothly.
The DeepSeek R1 model, a hefty 404GB of storage and high-bandwidth memory typically found in GPU VRAM, is usually run on multi-GPU setups that distribute processing across several high-end graphics cards.
A unique feat: running DeepSeek R1 in memoryHowever, the M3 Ultra’s unified memory system, instead of relying on external GPUs, uses its 512GB of unified memory to store and process the AI model in a way that no other personal computer can.
Although MacOS imposes a default VRAM limit, Dave Lee manually increased it through the Terminal to allocate up to 448GB for AI processing, eliminating memory bottlenecks and reducing the need for multiple components to streamline AI performance on a single system.
One of the most striking aspects of this test was the M3 Ultra's power efficiency, as it consumed less than 200W while running DeepSeek R1.
The ability to run such a demanding AI model without a multi-GPU setup challenges the industry standard, which relies on high-end Nvidia and AMD graphics cards, as the best workstations and server farms typically use GPU clusters that consume vast amounts of electricity.
Apple’s unified memory architecture enables significant power savings by sharing the M3 Ultra’s memory pool across CPU and GPU workloads, unlike conventional PC setups where VRAM is separate from system memory, maximizing bandwidth while minimizing energy use.
Apple’s Mac Studio, launched with the M3 Ultra chip, features up to a 32-core CPU and an 80-core GPU, making it one of the best LLM workstations and one of the best video editing computers.
Via Wccftech
You may also likeMax has been busy making a lot of updates to its app in the last year as part of its global expansion to more countries, but not every new feature is a welcome one.
Of the 120 new features that were added to the Max app in 2024, most are aimed at improving the content discovery journey to finding the best Max movies and best Max shows, but there have also been some less favorable ad-related updates.
These include ads that let you shop for products related to the content you're watching by clicking on a QR code, sponsored content recommendations, and commercials that target 'moments' (not to be confused with Netflix's 'moments' feature that makes sharing content on social easier).
It's an area that many of the best streaming services are increasingly doubling down on as they look for more ways to generate lost revenue from unsuccessful movies and shows. Indeed, Prime Video has also been adding a lot of the same ad features over the past year, making it slowly fill up with even more ads.
Aside from the ad onslaught, Warner Bros. Discovery has been making other changes to the Max app, including enhancements like an improved navigation design on the homepage to make your streaming life easier.
This update moved the navigation tools normally found at the top of a title to the left-side utility menu, making it much simpler to find these options (see the difference this made in the image below).
Global subscribers have also been treated to more ways to find content in the app, even while in the middle of streaming. This feature lets you browse similar titles while watching a movie or show by clicking a drop-down arrow to access the recommendation list.
Like Netflix, Max has also added similar functionality to recommend more movies and shows to watch after you've finished streaming a title. This means that after 25 seconds, if you haven't selected something else, a related genre title will automatically start playing.
Another Netflix feature that Max has added is that titles on the homepage will automatically begin playing the trailer with audio while browsing. I don't know about you, but I can't help but find this distracting while browsing for content and would rather that the audio be muted while the video plays. At least, this feature has only been rolled out to the US for now.
Other US-only features that have been added include the ability to watch five of HBO's linear channels through the app. These include HBO, HBO 2, HBO Signature, HBO Comedy, and HBO Zone.
And, of course, we can't forget the new multiview feature for 2025's NASCAR Cup Series that puts you in the driver's seat that was added to US subscribers' apps earlier this year. It's a great sports feature we're seeing being added to many streamers, such as the Apple TV app and YouTube.
These are just a small portion of the tech updates that Max's streaming app has added since September 2024, but they highlight a lot of the behind-the-scenes work that the service is doing as it looks to expand into more regions.
Max has been rolled out to 73 new countries in the space of nine months and will soon launch on Aussie shores on March 31, just in time for HBO's The Last of Us season 2, which premieres on April 13. However, for those of us in the UK, we'll have to patiently wait a bit longer until we can access all of these great features in the Max (most likely early 2026, going by reports). In the meantime, the best place to stream HBO content in the US is on Sky or Now.
You might also likeWhile AI darling Nvidia continues to dominate the AI accelerator market, with a share of over 90%, its closest rival, AMD, is hoping to challenge the Blackwell lineup with its new Instinct MI355X series of GPUs.
The MI355X, now expected to arrive by mid-2025, is manufactured on TSMC’s 3nm node and built on AMD's new CDNA 4 architecture. It will feature 288GB of HBM3E memory, bandwidth of up to 8TB/sec, and support for FP6 and FP4 low-precision computing, positioning it as a strong rival to Nvidia’s Blackwell B100 and B200.
In 2024, we reported on a number of big wins for AMD, which included shipping thousands of its MI300X AI accelerators to Vultr, a leading privately-held cloud computing platform, and to Oracle. Now, the latter has announced plans to build a cluster of 30,000 MI355X AI accelerators.
StargateThis latest news was revealed during Oracle’s recent Q2 2025 earnings call, where Larry Ellison, Chairman and Chief Technology Officer, told investors, “In Q3, we signed a multi-billion dollar contract with AMD to build a cluster of 30,000 of their latest MI355X GPUs.”
Although he didn’t go into further detail beyond that, Ellison did talk about Project Stargate, saying, “We are in the process of building a gigantic 64,000 GPU liquid-cooled Nvidia GB200 cluster for AI training.”
He later added, “Stargate looks to be the biggest AI training project out there, and we expect that will allow us to grow our RPO even higher in the coming quarters. And we do expect our first large Stargate contract fairly soon.”
When questioned further about Stargate by a Deutsche Bank analyst, Ellison gave a reply that could just as easily apply to the cluster of MI355X AI accelerators Oracle is planning to build.
"The capability we have is to build these huge AI clusters with technology that actually runs faster and more economically than our competitors. So it really is a technology advantage we have over them. If you run faster and you pay by the hour, you cost less. So that technology advantage translates to an economic advantage which allows us to win a lot of these huge deals,” he said.
Ellison also touched on Oracle’s data center strategy, saying, “So, we can start our data centers smaller than our competitors and then we grow based on demand. Building these data centers is expensive, and they’re really expensive if they’re not full or at least half full. So we tend to start small and then add capacity as demand arises.”
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