preparing

Samsung is tired of being second in the chip race. Now they are preparing to dethrone the titan of Taiwan

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When we talk about artificial intelligence, there are several proper names that star in the conversation. NVIDIA has become the foundation and cement of AI thanks both to their products as, above all, your money. But it’s impossible to leave Samsung out of the equation. Your HBM4 memories They are the ones that will allow NVIDIA and AMD manufacture their platforms new generation, but South Koreans do not want to stop there. They seek to be the largest advanced factory in the world and have launched a plan to wipe TSMC where it hurts the most. In the expansion throughout the United States. An x8 thanks to AI. 2025 was a transition year for Samsung. While its great rival in the memoir segment –SK Hynix– dominated the HBM chip marketSamsung is preparing to make the leap with HBM4 chips. This is the new generation of high-bandwidth memory designed to power the new AI platforms from both NVIDIA and Samsung. The effort paid off by overtaking SK and becoming the supplier of the two giants, and it is something that is already materializing. At least in estimates profit, of course. Now the company forecast profits of about 38 billion dollars for the first quarter of the year, something that destroys the profits of the same period last year, being eight times more. Texas. The company does not stop manufacturing the new HBM4 memory, but even so it cannot satisfy the enormous demand of its customers and there are already those who expect that the prices of these chips will increase by more than 50%. To meet demand, Samsung is moving, and The United States is key in its ambitious expansion. The South Korean company seeks to invest 37,000 million dollars in US soil, and 17,000 million of them they will stop to the Taylor, Texas plant. According to Korea Heraldthe company is finalizing hiring for this semiconductor plant where they hope to produce cutting-edge 2-nanometer chips. It is estimated that 1,500 people will be directly employed and the idea is to produce transistors with gate-all-around architecture. TSMC in the spotlight. Recent reports indicate that Samsung has already begun producing test units of chips in that lithography with the aim of beginning mass production by 2027. But this expansion is not only occurring in the United States. At the Pyeongtaek Campus, Samsung’s operations center, building a new factory for which Samsung has just ordered 20 EUV lithography machines valued at almost $8 billion. As it could not be otherwise, they are from ASML and it is estimated that the plant will have 70 units in total to support the production of HBM4 memory chips. And these two movements have one goal in mind: to dethrone the queen of semiconductors. Currently, TSMC takes the lead with NVIDIA and Apple as its best clientsbut Samsung is another industry giant that may not take the global throne, but is aiming for something more concrete: to be the one who leads the way in the United States. Both Samsung and TSMC are in full expansion throughout the United States, but if Samsung manages to start mass manufacturing of 2nm chips by 2027, it would overtake TSMC -focused on 2/3nm chips– in that development of advanced chips in the United States. It is still a vital race, since Tesla, Apple, NVIDIA or AMD are trying to get chips manufactured in the US and thus meet the demands of Donald Trump’s government. Trojan horse. In the end, it’s a move that Samsung can only win from. On the one hand, expand its HBM4 chip capacity to power AI platforms that do not seem to stop increasing in the short term. On the other hand, continuing to settle on American soil where it maintains a battle with the Taiwanese giant. But, also, Samsung is one of the founding members of the EPIC program of Applied Materials together with SK Hynix. They are positioning themselves to be the big player in semiconductors both as a factory and when it comes to designing machines and processes that allow for shorter development times for cutting-edge chips. and all this foreign companies are doing it on US soil when what the current government wanted was for were American companies those who will take the lead. In fact, Samsung’s plans are so ambitious that they are already looking for master 1nm chip production by 2030. In Xataka | ASML has discovered a way to further improve its SVU machines. This is terrible news for China and the US.

TSMC and SK Hynix are suffocating Samsung. To defend itself, it is already preparing a brutal weapon: 1 nm chips

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Samsung Electronics has two major competitors in the semiconductor industry: TSMC and SK Hynix. The Taiwanese company TSMC leads the market for manufacturing integrated circuits for third parties with a share close to 70%, according to the consulting firm. TrendForce. Samsung is the second largest chip producer for third parties, although with a market share of 7.2% It is positioned very far from the leader of this industry. And the Chinese company SMIC (Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp) is hot on his heels in third position with a share of 5.32%. Samsung’s other big business is memory chips. In this market it competes with the American company Micron Technology, but its biggest rival is the also South Korean company SK Hynix. In recent years, Samsung has led the DRAM memory integrated circuit manufacturing market with an approximate 40% share, while SK Hynix defended a very worthy 29%. Behind both was Micron Technology, with 26% approximately. However, during the first quarter of 2025 a very important setback occurred. SK Hynix controls none other than 70% of the market of HBM memory ICs (High Bandwidth Memory), so its leadership in this sector is overwhelming. If we look at the DRAM memory chips the figures are much more even, although SK Hynix also leads. TSMC and SK Hynix. SK Hynix and TSMC. These two competitors are two big headaches for Samsung, but the latter company seems unwilling to throw in the towel. Samsung plans to have its 1nm photolithography ready in 2030 In February 2025 the Taiwan Economic Daily published a report in which he assured that TSMC plans to develop a cutting-edge semiconductor plant that will be expressly designed to produce 1nm chips. It will be housed in the Taiwanese town of Tainan, and will be called ‘Fab 25’. It will work with 12-inch wafers, have six production lines and will begin large-scale manufacturing in 2030. It may seem like there is still a lot of time, but that is not the case. In fact, according to the newspaper Korea Economic DailySamsung is making efforts to step on the heels of TSMC. And, incidentally, surpass SK Hynix. Samsung’s future 1nm production lines will benefit from the refinements that the company is going to introduce to its 2nm nodes And Samsung engineers have already been working on their 1 nm photolithography for many months with the aim of concluding the research and development phase in 2030 to be able to start mass manufacturing in 2031. There is a lot at stakebut the development of this technology is by no means a piece of cake. In fact, this company is currently trying to optimize the performance of its 2nm nodes because its Exynos 2600 processor in smartphones Galaxy S26 and S26+ suffers when we compare its performance and energy efficiency with those of comparable chips manufactured by TSMC in its 3nm nodes. Be that as it may, Samsung’s future 1nm semiconductor production lines will benefit from the refinements that this company is going to introduce in its 2nm nodes. And, above all, they will take advantage of Fork Sheet technology with which its engineers seek to leave behind the limitations of Gate-All-Around technology (GAA). Fork Sheet It will allow them, roughly speaking, to dramatically optimize the space on 1nm chips by adding a non-conductive element between the transistors with one purpose: to eliminate empty spaces and pack a higher density of transistors on the same surface. It sounds really good. We will tell you more as soon as we have detailed information about this innovation. Image | Generated by Xataka with Gemini More information | Korea Economic Daily In Xataka | We already know what the chips that will arrive until 2039 will be like. The machine that will allow them to be manufactured is close

China has been patiently preparing for a major global energy crisis for years. And now it reaps its fruits

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The Third Gulf War is here and the global oil market looks into the abyss. The blockade of the Strait of Hormuz has unleashed an unprecedented logistical panic and has catapulted the barrel of Brent well above $100. The panic is palpable throughout the Asian continent: The Philippines cuts working hours, Singapore sends its office workers to telework and Thailand intervenes in diesel prices in desperation. Just a few thousand kilometers away, China observes the global chaos with an almost insulting coldness. The Asian giant has not been saved by providence, but by millimetric planning. Just as centuries ago it built a vast stone infrastructure to stop nomadic invasions, Beijing has been building an invisible Great Wall for more than a decade to isolate itself from fossil volatility. The seed of this resistance must be found five years ago. In 2021, during a visit to an oil field, President Xi Jinping ruled that China should keep the “energy rice bowl” firmly in its own hands. According to The Economisttransferring this traditional metaphor (historically used to appeal to food sovereignty) to energy, made clear a state obsession: the country was going to prepare tirelessly for the worst possible scenario. Is patience a good bet? There are several popular proverbs and sayings that say that whoever waits, victory will be sweeter. In the case of China it is a pure and simple pragmatic and geostrategic application. As we analyze in Xatakathis shielding is the direct result of the strategy “Made in China 2025” designed a decade ago. The Chinese government understood that dependence on foreign oil and gas was its greatest military and economic vulnerability. Mass electrification was not an environmental whim, but a matter of national survival. Today, China generates more than a quarter of its electricity with sun and wind, rewriting the world order and dividing the board between the old “petrostates” and the new “electrostates.” But while that transition is complete, Beijing has not neglected the fossil economy. The Chinese model puts raw resilience before the efficiency of Western markets, As a column points out Five Days. The best example is what happened last year. While global markets debated an alleged oil oversupply, China took advantage of the low prices to spend $10 billion buying heavily sanctioned oil from Russia, Venezuela and Iran; a crude oil that, in reality, I did not need immediately. The result of this silent hoarding is that today China has massive Strategic Petroleum Reserves (SPR), estimated between 900 and 1.4 billion barrels. This mattress is enough to cover between 96 and 140 days of your internal demand without caring for a single drop from the outside. The shield in action This long-term preparation has allowed China to deploy an arsenal of almost immediate containment measures since the conflict in the Gulf broke out: Closing energy borders: The first lightning order from the Chinese National Development and Reform Commission was to demand from their state giants of refining (PetroChina, Sinopec, CNOOC) to immediately suspend gasoline and diesel exports to protect the supply of the domestic market. The “shadow fleet”: Despite the war and the blockade, oil continues to flow to China. Iran is exporting a daily average of 2.1 million barrels using a fleet of old oil tankers without tracking systems that operate outside the US financial system. Land alternatives: To completely avoid the vulnerable Strait of Hormuz, the Asian power is squeezing to the maximum the land pipelines that connect it directly with Russia and Kazakhstan. Renewable bestiality: This is your shield more impenetrable: The price of solar panels and electric cars does not rise when there is a war in the Persian Gulf. In July 2024, China reached its goal of 1,200 GW of wind and solar capacity, achieving it six years ahead of schedule. In addition, new energy vehicles have already exceeded 60% of total car sales in the country by the end of 2025. Megainfrastructures and market reform: To manage the intermittency of renewables, increased their storage capacity by batteries 75% in 2025. Furthermore, the political response does not stop, as detailed ChinaDailyhave announced that the National Energy Administration will launch urgent reforms ahead of the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030) to create a “unified national energy market” capable of managing the volatility of having so much green energy on the grid. The dominance of uranium: Faced with the need to fuel its 58 operational nuclear reactors and the 27 under construction, Beijing has budgeted about $16 billion for resource storage in 2026. This includes the exploitation of gigantic deposits in the Ordos Desert and the pioneering extraction of uranium from seawater. The small print However, China’s energy “rice bowl” still has cracks. To keep the system afloat, the country remains dependent on an immense, dirty safety net: the coal. In 2024, this mineral supplied 56% of its energy primary and, currently, they have more than 300 plants under construction. As emphasized a report of ChinaPower Projectdespite the pollution, the vast and abundant supply of coal offers Chinese policymakers a true final “safety net” against disruptions from other sources. But the real battle for survival is not only fought in the oil wells, but in the semiconductor laboratories. Although the country manufactured an astronomical 484 billion chips in 2024, still no access to the UVE lithography machines of the European company ASML. However, the Asian giant is finding cracks in the Western blockade. China already has two companies, SMIC and Huali Microelectronics, capable of producing advanced 7-nanometer chips using engineering techniques ‘multiple patterning’ using machines from previous generations. It is a more expensive and less efficient process, but it shows that sanctions only accelerate their quest for sovereignty. The next bottleneck to overcome is chemical. The country depends almost entirely on Japan (specifically from JSR Corporation) to obtain the hyper-specialized photoresist liquids needed in chip lithography. The new Chinese five-year plan has already set a five-year deadline to also break this Japanese monopoly. And while China weaves this net of absolute … Read more

The US is preparing for what comes next

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If something is becoming clear these days, it is that very few kilometers of sea can condition everything the world economy. There are strategic passages through which a large part of the global oil circulates nearby, and when one of those points is blocked, the impact quickly spreads to markets, transportation and the price (and bill) of energy across the planet. A trap retreat. It we count a few days ago. In the midst of a conflict in which the Strait of Hormuz is practically closed and under constant threat, the United States took a striking decision: withdraw two of its three main specialized mine warfare vessels from the area and send them thousands of kilometers, first to Malaysia and now arrived in Singapore. These units are not accessory, but key to any attempt to reopen the sea route. Its absence in the immediate scenario breaks with the usual logic of concentrating capacities where the crisis develops and forces us to seek an explanation on another level. Possibly for this reason, the movement is not what it may seem at first glance. The real value. I remembered this week the wall street journal in a report that naval mines are one of the most effective tools to block maritime traffic, especially in a narrow point like Hormuz. They do not require large deployments, are difficult to detect and can keep a route closed for long periods. Cleaning them is, therefore, a slow, technical and risky process that requires very specific means. The ships of the Independence classwith their unmanned systems, helicopters and advanced sensors, represent precisely that capability. Without them, any operation to restore oil tanker transit becomes much more complex. View from the USS Tulsa upon arrival at Changi Naval Base Shortage at the most critical moment. The problem from the side of the United States is that it reaches this phase cwith limited resources. For years it has reduced its fleet of traditional minesweepers, retiring units without their replacements being available. fully deployed or tested in combat. New solutions based on drones and autonomous systems exist, but their number is small and their effectiveness in a real environment has yet to be demonstrated. In parallel, Iran has shown that it can sow mines and combine that threat with missiles, drones and attacks on ships, making the strait an especially difficult environment to operate in. Plan B. In this context, the analysts recalled by TWZ that the movement of these ships out of the conflict zone suggests a very different priority: preserve demining capacity in the face of a possible further deterioration of the current situation. The idea would be simple. Keep them away from attack range avoids the risk of losing hard-to-replace assets at a time when they are already scarce. In other words, it is a way to ensure that, when the time comes to reopen the strait, these very fundamental means remain available and operational. File image of an Avenger-class minehunter during an exercise Reopen, not just fight. Because the closure of Hormuz is not just a military problem, but economic. How have we been countinga significant part of the world’s oil and gas circulates through this route, and its prolonged blockage has immediate effects in prices, supplies and logistics chains. It happens that reopening it does not depend only on escorting ships, but on guaranteeing that the canal is threat free persistent like mines. This phase, slower and less visible, can be decisive in normalizing maritime traffic. The strategic signal. Precisely for this reason, the fact that these ships are now more than 6,000 kilometers of the conflict does not indicate that they have ceased to be relevant, but rather the opposite. Their value lies in the fact that they are necessary and fundamental for the next stage, not so much for the current one. Instead of using them in the most dangerous environment, the United States seems to choose to keep them intact for a time when their use will be essential. The evolution of the conflict. If you also want, the decision fits with a two-stage planning: first, manage the phase direct confrontation. And then, ensure the reopening of critical routes. He minesweeper movement It points out that Washington is not only focused on the immediate development of the war, but also on avoiding a prolonged blockade that would have global consequences. In that sense, more than a withdrawal, the current position of the minesweepers is an indication of how the end of the conflict is being planned and the conditions necessary to stabilize it… if that is possible. Image | USN In Xataka | If there was any “red line” left, Iran has decided to cross it just where it hurts the world economy the most: in Qatar In Xataka | Russia is not sending troops or weapons to Iran: it is sending something much more important to take down the US

We believed that machines could only beat us at chess or Go, but now they are preparing to beat us at tennis

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Kasparov succumbed to Deep Blue and that showed that machines could finally surpass humans. Then came defeats in other fields (Go, StarCraft), but always with algorithms as the protagonists. Now those who want to surpass us are the robots, and after some disappointments and also amazing previewsare wanting to conquer a sport that poses an exceptional challenge: tennis. Be careful, Alcaraz, the robots are coming. Researchers from Tsinghua University and Peking University, among others, have collaborated to develop a robot capable of playing tennis. The project has been named LATENT (Learn Athlethic humanoid TEnnis skills from imperfect human Motion daTa) and it is surprising because the principle is very similar to that of developments like AlphaZero: the machine (the robot) practically learns to play by itself. We have already seen similar advances with sports like ping pong or with kung fu demonstrationsbut this milestone has been achieved in a different and striking way. imperfect movements. Until now, getting a robot to react at the speed of a tennis ball was an almost insurmountable challenge due to the lack of perfect movement data, but the advances made by these researchers are especially striking. Especially since these machines now use “imperfect” information captured from humans to learn how to play. Mini tennis. Capturing accurate data from a real tennis match is very expensive and complex due to the size of the court and the subtlety of the tennis players’ wrist movements. To solve this, the LATENT team chose to collect “primitive skills” data. That is, the robot was shown basic movements such as the forehand drive, backhand, or lateral movements. In addition, an area 17 times smaller than a professional court was used precisely to reduce the complexity of the initial system. The objective: that from there the robot could develop its own technique. Learn from your mistakes. The striking thing about this development is that with those few data the robot was capable of making corrections on the fly when moving or hitting the ball. Thus, he was able to maintain the stability of his body following the style of human movements, but he was also able to finely adjust the angle of the racket to impact the ball appropriately. No strange things. The researchers also wanted to prevent the robot from starting to “make up” strange movements during its reinforcement training. Thus, they created a technique that forced the AI ​​to explore only human-like movements based on the initial data distribution. Unitree G1 already plays tennis. To translate their system into reality, the researchers installed this system on a Unitree G1 robot. This model of humanoid robot It has 29 degrees of freedom and a racket was attached using a 3D printed part. The physical tests were surprising: the G1 was able to return balls thrown at more than 15 m/s (54 km/h), but it was also able to maintain rallies with human players on a real court. The robot was capable of covering a large part of the court and dynamically adapting its posture according to the trajectory of the ball. The beginning of something bigger. These tennis robots are very far from being able to compete with human players—much less with professionals—but they demonstrate that reinforcement learning techniques that have been applied in games such as chess or Go may be valid for physical environments with robots. In fact, this advance raises the possibility that robots can learn any physical discipline (whether sports or not) from a limited learning of basic movements. In Xataka | And finally the human being beat, with much drama, a robot playing ping pong

In 2021 a man made a military prediction and since then Taiwan and the US have been preparing for a date: 2027

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In a military sense, there are few things as influential as a date that no one has officially set. Sometimes one sentence in a parliamentary hearing is enough for governments, armies and analysts to begin reorganizing budgets, exercises and strategies for years. In the Indo-Pacific, a figure pronounced some time ago ended up becoming a kind geopolitical clock. In fact, today marks the planning of various powers. The prediction on the calendar. In March 2021, a seemingly technical testimony before the US Senate ended up becoming one of the most influential points of reference in the Indo-Pacific military strategy. Then Admiral Philip Davidson warned that the rapid growth of Chinese military power could endanger Taiwan “within the next six years,” a statement that implicitly set a date: 2027. That estimate, based on intelligence analysis on the modernization of the People’s Liberation Army, quickly became what many strategists called the “Davidson window”. Since then, the number was installed in military planning of Washington, Taipei and their allies, triggering an investment careerwar exercises and military reinforcements throughout the Pacific. 2027 and the centenary. Of course, the reason why that date seemed plausible was closely related to the people themselves. Beijing’s strategic objectives. 2027 marks the centenary of the armed wing of the Chinese Communist Party, the People’s Liberation Army, and Xi Jinping’s leadership has set that year as a key stage to complete a major phase of military modernization. The plan is part of a broader calendar that seeks to have “basically modernized” armed forces by 2035 and capable of rivaling any world power around 2049. Although Beijing has never officially announced that this anniversary is linked to an invasion of Taiwan, the temporal coincidence between military modernization and increasing demonstrations of strength around the island has reinforced the perception that 2027 could become a critical moment. The strategy in the Pacific. As the years went by, that prediction took on a life of its own. Washington increased significantly its military spending aimed at competing with China and began to reinforce strategic infrastructure on Pacific islands to facilitate the deployment of forces. At the same time, the United States approved billions of dollars in arms sales to Taiwan, while Taipei began to adjust its military planning around a possible invasion scenario towards the end of the decade. Even the major Taiwanese military exercises have passed to simulate explicitly a Chinese attack in 2027, reflecting how a single strategic estimate ended up becoming a true geopolitical clock for the entire region. A surprise attack. For a long time, military analysis assumed that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be impossible to conceal. A deployment of hundreds or thousands of ships, troops and equipment along the Chinese coast would generate obvious signals detectable by satellites and intelligence services weeks before the start of the operation. However, some analysts now warn that this assumption could be too optimistic. Recent research has suggested that China could attempt forms of attack faster or surprisingleveraging new tactics and technologies to reduce advance notice time. This scenario is especially worrying to Taiwan, which has historically relied on having enough time to react and mobilize its defenses. Increasingly intense military career. Meanwhile, Chinese military power has continued to expand at great speed. Beijing’s defense budget has increased steadily over the last decade and the country has introduced new capabilities that could be key in an eventual conflict: long-range missiles, advanced drones, new aircraft carriers and ships designed to transport troops and material to hostile coasts. These transformations do not guarantee that an invasion is imminent, of course, but they are changing the balance military in the Taiwan Strait and fueling concerns about the future of the region. The domino effect of other wars. The international context adds another layer of uncertainty to this strategic calculation. Conflicts in other regions, especially the Middle East, are forcing the United States to consume large quantities of ammunition, interceptors and military resources that were originally intended to reinforce deterrence in Asia. Analysts warn that a prolonged war in other theaters could delay deliveries of weapons to Taiwan and further strain US defense industrial capacity, where there is already a significant delay in military orders destined for the island. A strategic watch. Although neither China nor the United States have officially set a timetable for a conflict, the idea of ​​2027 has become a point psychological reference for governments, military and analysts. Some believe that this date has fueled unnecessary fears and an arms race in the region, while others believe that it has served to wake up Washington and its allies facing a historic change in the balance of power. In any case, the prediction made in 2021 has left a more than profound mark: today, in the barracks, offices and strategy centers of the Indo-Pacific, the calendar advances with a figure marked in red. 2027… and China. Image | 中文（臺灣）：​中華民國總統府, 總統府, Al Jazeera In Xataka | “We have never seen anything like this”: if China invades Taiwan, Taiwan will not notice because a drone has been disguised as an optical illusion for months In Xataka | An island has become the new red line against China: it has Taiwan in front of it and Japan is going to fill it with missiles

Spain is preparing a data center specifically designed to have AI for war. The surprise: it is in Soria

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More than two thousand years ago, on the hill of Numanciaits inhabitants preferred to resist to the end rather than surrender to the siege of the legions of Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus. That story of defiance against a superior enemy has remained engraved in Soria’s memory as a symbol of resistance. Now, a few kilometers from that place, in the Valcorba industrial estate, the Ministry of Defense wants to build another kind of fortress: a data center named Numant-IA, where defense will no longer be measured in walls or swords, but in servers, algorithms and artificial intelligence. A unique project. While we live a technological-military schism in the USSpain accelerates in a project that precisely combines both sections. The Government has launched Numant-IA, a data center with a notable investment and totally dedicated to offering computing for AI. Here there are, yes, two notes that stand out. The full name of the project will be the Center for Advanced Defense Technological Capabilities, and its investment is part of the Annual Contracting Plan of the Ministry of Defense (Pacdef) from 2026. It includes 7,868 proposals and 156 framework agreements with a combined value of 10,102 million euros. Soria, new technological capital. The data center announced by the Government last September and that already it was outlined months before, it will have its headquarters in Soria. The project will take advantage of a space provided by the Soria City Council and that covers an area of ​​almost four hectares in the Valcorba industrial estate. Lieutenant General José María Millán, director of CESTIC, already warned then that said center will carry out the “incorporation of artificial intelligence systems for the benefit of the Armed Forces.” Military applications. The initial investment, which was 70 million euros, has been increased to almost 130 million euros according to El Heraldo de Soriaand will be assumed by the Ministry of Defense. Its resources will be used for applications that will process classified data in the area of ​​operations and logistics, and military applications will be an integral part of its mission. This project confirms other movements of the Armed Forces such as the development of Gonzalo, that “ChatGPT” for the army which is precisely designed to support this type of tasks safely. Employment and template. About 20 people will be a permanent part of the staff of this center that will operate 24/7 once it is operational. The construction of the data center, the Department of Defense states, will generate “a significant economic and employment impact on the city.” We know when, but we don’t know what. The Ministry of Defense has indicated that the project has a construction period of 24 months, and therefore they hope that it will theoretically be ready by early 2028. What we do not know is what type of infrastructure it will house or what the real capacity of the data center will be. 67.88 million euros will be dedicated to information systems and servers – unspecified, perhaps because they are not yet defined – while construction will be allocated 58.68 million euros and a third item of 1.65 million euros has no specified purpose. Sovereignty and decentralization. Choosing Soria as the location for this data center responds to the decentralization strategy of the Armed Forces. The defense budgets demonstrate this with a distribution of these funds throughout Spain in different projects that try to avoid the danger of excessive centralization of critical centers. The movement also answers to others that we have been seeing for months and that make it clear that in Spain and Europe they are trying to find solutions that allow us to have the highest possible degree of digital sovereignty. Image | Ministry of Defense In Xataka | Spain’s main problem is not weapons, fighters or drones: it is the number of hands it lacks to use them

After launching the cheapest Mac in history, Apple is preparing three ‘Ultra’ products. Wants to go for both ends of the market

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A few days after the arrival of MacBook Neothe cheapest Mac in history, we know thanks to Mark Gurman in Bloomberg that Apple is preparing three products for this year. All three aspire to be the most expensive in their category. And that contrast says a lot about Apple’s strategy for the immediate future. The panoramic. Gurman is the journalist with the best history of leaks about Apple. And he has published in his newsletter Power On that Apple plans to launch at least three products with the Ultra surname, or at least with its essence (the most powerful and expensive in its range): A foldable iPhone. We have been listening to it for years and It seems that 2026 is going to be the year. Expected price of around $2,000. It does not replace the Pro Max, but rather points to another form factor and to those who want to have the most advanced device in the line. AirPods with camera sensors. They would be above the AirPods Pro in price. Its differential would not be in the audio but in space capabilities that the cameras would provide. Macbook Ultra. Although it is not confirmed that it will be called that. With OLED touch panel and M5 Ultra chip. It would be the most expensive and powerful laptop ever launched by Apple, aimed at those who already spend similar amounts on a mac studio plus a monitor. All this in the same year that Apple launches the MacBook Neo for $600. He counted. They are complementary movements. The Neo lowers the barrier to entry into the Mac ecosystem, and the Ultra raises it for those who are already inside and can (and want) to go further. Apple has been trying a similar logic for some time. He first Apple Watch Ultra It arrived in 2022 for about double the price of the current Series. Without being a radically different product, it found its buyer: who wanted the best Apple Watch possible without the price being a major obstacle. It worked. Between the lines. The touch screen on a Mac deserves separate attention, because Apple justified not incorporating it a few years ago, when there was some pressure for it to do so, explaining that touching a computer screen is uncomfortable due to the position of the arm. The question. Just because the strategy is coherent on paper does not mean that all products will be able to sustain it. The foldable iPhone will arrive after seven years with other foldables on the market, without anyone being able to turn it into a bestseller. AirPods with cameras are going to have to offer something that justifies the spending premium, not just a gimmicky demo for the first few days. And the MacBook Ultra will have to justify its price with something that only that laptop can deliver. Apple knows better than anyone that a premium line demands that premium products truly deliver. In 2026 we will see if it is up to the task with this new shipment that seeks to raise the ceiling of several lines. In Xataka | Apple has only found one option to make a cheap laptop: make it a mobile Featured image | Tatiana Steve, insung yoon, dlxmedia.hu

NVIDIA is going to spend $4 billion on photonics companies. He is preparing for what is coming

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NVIDIA does not provide stitches without thread. At the end of August 2025, the company led by Jensen Huang announced that in 2026 their platforms artificial intelligence next generation (AI) will use photonic interconnections to achieve higher transfer speeds between GPU clusters. This announcement came during the conference specializing in semiconductor engineering and high-performance computing ‘Hot Chips’, which was held in Palo Alto (California), and was just the prelude to what was to come. And this same week NVIDIA has revealed that is going to invest 2,000 million dollars in Lumentum, and the same amount in Coherent. These two companies have something very important in common: they are specialized in developing photonic technologies. Shortly after NVIDIA confirmed its interest in them, the shares of these two companies rose 5 and 9% respectively. And the company led by Jensen Huang has committed to purchasing products from Lumentum and Coherent for several billion dollars, and also to use their advanced laser solutions and optical networking technologies. Photonics is the support that cutting-edge semiconductors need Most IC designers and manufacturers are working on the development of silicon photonics. Douglas Yu, a TSMC executive with responsibility for systems integration, explained in September 2023 very clearly what disruptive capacity this technology has: “If we manage to implement a good integration system for silicon photonics, we will unleash a new paradigm. We will probably place ourselves at the beginning of a new era.” Silicon photonics is a discipline that in the field in question seeks to develop the technology of this chemical element to optimize the transformation of electrical signals into light pulses. The most obvious field of application of this innovation is implementing high performance links which, on paper, can be used both to resolve communications between several chips and to optimize the transfer of information between several machines. In AI clusters, thousands of GPUs must work in unison, so it is essential to connect them using high-performance links The advanced packaging technologies used by leading semiconductor manufacturers, such as TSMC, Intel or Samsung, can greatly benefit from a very high-performance inter-chip communication mechanism. And large data centers where it is necessary to connect a large number of machines, too. However, there is one discipline in particular that has an overwhelming future projection and that would benefit greatly from building on the advantages offered by silicon photonics: AI. This is precisely NVIDIA’s bet. In AI clusters, thousands of GPUs must work in unison, so it is essential to connect them using high-performance links. It is possible to solve this challenge using traditional copper cables or optical modules, but both of these solutions introduce into the infrastructure very important inefficiencies. The most problematic are energy loss and bottlenecks. Data transfer can consume up to 30 watts per port, which increases energy dissipation as heat and increases the likelihood of failure. Additionally, latency limits the scalability of clusters as the number of GPUs in data centers increases. To resolve these inefficiencies, NVIDIA will integrate the optical components required for photonic interconnections into the same switching chip package. This technology is known as CPO (Co-Packaged Optics) and manages to reduce power consumption to only 9 watts per port. Additionally, it minimizes signal loss and improves data integrity. Looks really good. NVIDIA has confirmed that it will integrate CPO technology into its Quantum-X InfiniBand and Spectrum-X Ethernet interconnect platforms during 2026. However, there is something important that is worth not overlooking: CPO is not going to be an extra. When it arrives, it will be established as a structural requirement of the next generation of AI data centers in a clear attempt to increase the competitiveness of NVIDIA’s AI hardware platforms. Image | Generated by Xataka with Gemini More information | Reuters In Xataka | Intel and TSMC lead the photonic chip revolution. Their problem is that China has just gotten fully involved in this war

The new fighter that Sweden is preparing is a “plane of airplanes”

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Swedish intelligence is clear: The conflict between Ukraine and Russia will expand across the old continent next year. Given this scenario, Sweden just signed a contract to renew its latest generation fighter for a totally different concept: a key “plane of airplanes” in the first line of defense of a Europe that still He is not very clear how to defend himself. Because Ukraine is not the only front: the threat of United States annexation of Greenland is still in the air. The contract. The Nordic country has hired Saab for 282 million dollars to develop the program Koncept för Framtida Stridsflyg (KFS, Concept for Future Combat Aviation) called to rejuvenate its fleet: KFS will be the basis of the roadmap to rejuvenate its air combat capabilities in the long term. The project started in March 2024 as Vägval Stridsflyg and after financing, it is in the development and first demo phase. Context. Within the old continent, Sweden is a particular case in air defense due to its location: despite be neutral in the Cold Warthe threat of the USSR was just around the corner, in the Baltic. Since then, maintaining strategic sovereignty has been a national priority for the Nordic country. In fact, and although it participated in the Team Tempest program led by the United Kingdom, got off the boat when this evolved into the Global Combat Aviation Program (GCAP) that integrates the United Kingdom, Italy and Japan to go it alone. Because Sweden has been building its own fighters for decades, Draken to the current Gripen E passing through Viggen. After years of service and development behind them, Gripen is already looking for a replacement for 2040. Why is it important. The implications it brings are relevant, both from a technological and geopolitical point of view at the state and continental level: Because it is not a new aircraft, it is a new concept that could redefine the standard of combat aviation. The security context is urgent, as indicated by the information from the Swedish intelligence services and the recent entry of the Nordic country into NATO. For Sweden, it would consolidate its aeronautical defense industry in the long term, reinforcing its commitment to military technological sovereignty. For Europe, if consolidated it would be the continent’s third new generation fighter program along with the FCAS (France-Germany-Spain) and the GCAP (UK-Italy-Japan). Three different projects and the question of interoperability. How this “plane of airplanes” works. What Sweden wants to replace the Gripen is a distributed combat concept. Thus, the fighter’s function is fragmented into different specialized platforms coordinated in real time by artificial intelligence. Although in a simplified and accessible way we have referred to it as “plane of airplanes”, in reality it is sixth generation “system of systems” with a different architecture: This is a manned aircraft that governs a constellation of specialized drones under a centralized AI. Risks and weaknesses. The challenge is enormous for Saab, which has already tried Helsing’s Centaur AI (German) on a real flight with the Gripen E to manage tactical decisions in combat. Of course, the Nordic company has never built a stealth fighter life-size: its background is two small research drones the size of a car, the SHARC and the FILURdating back to the 2000s. On the other hand, although Centaur’s first tests are promising, they are far from validating the use of AI in combat in real conditions. Finally, the project is so ambitious in technical and economic terms and the time window is so long that a medium-sized country like Sweden facing it alone runs the risk of being overwhelmed. In Xataka | “It’s not what we need”: Germany has just put the finishing touches on Spain’s great military dream, the European anti-F-35 is disappearing In Xataka | Europe’s great Achilles heel is not its armies, it is its plugs: NATO’s warning to shield our electrical network Cover | saab

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