Technologies
Intel’s Next PC Chip, Meteor Lake, Will Speed Up AI Later This Year
The new processor is key to the chipmaker’s recovery plans and competing against Apple’s M series of Mac processors.

Today’s most glamorous, attention-getting AI tools — OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Bing, Google’s Bard and Adobe’s Photoshop, for example — run in data centers stuffed with powerful, expensive servers. But Intel on Monday revealed details of its forthcoming Meteor Lake PC processor that could help your laptop play more of a part in the artificial intelligence revolution.
Meteor Lake, scheduled to ship in computers later this year, includes circuitry that accelerates some AI tasks that otherwise might sap your battery. For example, it can improve AI that recognizes you to blur or replace backgrounds better during videoconferences, said John Rayfield, leader of Intel’s client AI work.
AI models use methods inspired by human brains to recognize patterns in complex, real-world data. By running AI on a laptop or phone processor instead of in the cloud, you can get benefits like better privacy and security as well as a snappier response since you don’t have network delays.
What’s unclear is how much AI work will really move from the cloud to PCs. Some software, like Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom, use AI extensively for finding people, skies and other subject matter in photos and many other image editing tasks. Apps can recognize your voice and transcribe it into text. Microsoft is building an AI chatbot called Windows Copilot straight into its operating system. But most computing work today exercises more traditional parts of a processor, its central processing unit (CPU) and graphics processing unit (GPU) cores.
There’s a build-it-and-they-will come possibility. Adding AI acceleration directly into the chip, as has already happened with smartphone processors and Apple M-series Mac processors, could encourage developers to write more software drawing on AI abilities.
GPUs are already pretty good for accelerating AI, though, and developers don’t have to wait for millions of us to upgrade our Windows PCs to take advantage of it. The GPU offers top AI performance on a PC, but the new AI-specific accelerator is good for low power, Rayfield said. Both can be used simultaneously for top performance, too.
Meteor Lake a key chip for Intel
Meteor Lake is important for other reasons, too. It’s designed for lower power operations, arguably the single biggest competitive weakness compared with the Apple M-series processors. It’s got upgraded graphics acceleration, which is critical for gaming and important for some AI tasks, too.
The processor also is key to Intel’s yearslong turnaround effort. It’s the first big chip to be built with Intel 4, a new manufacturing process essential to catching up with chipmaking leaders Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) and Samsung. And it employs new advanced manufacturing technology called Foveros that lets Intel stack multiple «chiplets» more flexibly and economically into a single more powerful processor.
Chipmakers are racing to tap into the AI revolution, few as successfully as Nvidia, which earlier in May reported a blowout quarter thanks to exploding demand for its highest-end AI chips. Intel sells data center AI chips, too, but has more of a focus on economy than performance.
In its PC processors, Intel calls its AI accelerator a vision processing unit, or VPU, a product family and name that stems from its 2016 acquisition of AI chipmaker Movidius.
These days, a variation called generative AI can create realistic imagery and human-sounding text. Although Meteor Lake can run one such image generator, Stable Diffusion, large AI language models like ChatGPT simply don’t fit on a laptop.
There’s a lot of work to change that, though. Facebook’s LLaMA and Google’s PaLM 2 both are large language models designed to scale down to smaller «client» devices like PCs and even phones with much less memory.
«AI in the cloud … has challenges with latency, privacy, security, and it’s fundamentally expensive,» Rayfield said. «Over time, as we can improve compute efficiency, more of this is migrating to the client.»
Technologies
Honor’s Shimmering Magic V Flip 2 Has Arrived to Outshine Samsung’s Galaxy Flip
The flip foldable, releasing in China, includes a limited edition model co-designed by Jimmy Choo.

Honor has unveiled a new flip phone in China, and the company is billing it as, «the ultimate selfie device.» The Magic V Flip 2 includes an ultra-wide portrait mode, AI photography features and a playful, sparkly design.
The Magic V Flip 2 adds another device to Honor’s increasing lineup of foldable phones. So far, it’s only releasing the Magic V Flip 2 in China, starting on Aug. 28. It will sell for RMB 5,499 or about $766 USD.
The Magic V Flip2 appears to be geared toward influencers and fashionistas — a limited edition version of the new phone is co-designed by fashion icon Jimmy Choo and is, «inspired by the subtle shimmer of crystals.» It comes in deep sea blue and has a crushed stardust design, according to Honor’s press release.
Honor is also touting the phone’s 5,500mAh battery, which it says is the largest on the market for a flip phone. The also phone features a 200-megapixel main camera, a 50-megapixel ultra-wide camera and a 50 MP selfie camera. The Magic V Flip 2’s closest competition may be Samsung’s Galaxy Flip 7 FE, which is about $200 more expensive than the Magic V Flip 2.
Technologies
Silksong, Long-Awaited Hollow Knight Spinoff, Gets Release Date: Sept. 4
Announced in 2019, Team Cherry’s follow-up is coming sooner than expected, and it’s on Game Pass on Day 1.

Hollow Knight: Silksong is the follow-up, announced back in 2019, to one of the most beloved indie games of the last decade. In a special announcement video on Thursday, Australian developer Team Cherry revealed that the wait is almost over.
Silksong will be released on Sept. 4, according to the new trailer. The almost two-minute video reveals some of the new enemies and bosses in the upcoming spinoff and ends with the surprise release date.
Originally, Silksong was going to be a DLC for Hollow Knight. However, numerous delays resulted in it being pushed back again and again. Glimpses of the game would show up here and there over the years, but it was this year that it received the most attention from Nintendo as part of its Switch 2 lineup, and from Microsoft, which confirmed it would be available on Xbox Game Pass.
Hollow Knight: Silksong will be available on PC, Switch, Switch 2, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and Series S, PS4 and PS5. It will be available on Day 1 for Xbox Game Pass subscribers.
Technologies
PS5 Prices Go Up Today. Here’s How Much and Why
You can expect to pay more for a new PlayStation, thanks to «a challenging economic environment.»

Sony will increase the prices of its PlayStation 5 consoles in the US, starting today. This follows the trend of console manufacturers such as Microsoft and Nintendo raising prices for their hardware in response to tariffs.
The PlayStation-maker posted about the price change Wednesday. The jump in price is $50 more than the current price for each model.
The new prices are:
- PlayStation 5: $500 to $550
- PlayStation 5 Digital Edition: $450 to $500
- PlayStation 5 Pro: $700 to $750
«Similar to many global businesses, we continue to navigate a challenging economic environment,» Sony said in a post about the price increase.
As of Thursday morning, retailers and Sony’s online store have yet to update the console prices. This jump in price also will likely affect recently released PS5 bundles such as the Astro Bot bundle and Fortnite Cobal bundle.
Sony says accessories have not been affected by the change and this cost hike only affects the US.
In May, Microsoft increased the price of the Xbox Series consoles and Nintendo hiked the original Switch console price and Switch 2 accessories this month.
While the companies didn’t point to the tariffs instituted by President Donald Trump as the reason for the hardware price jump, it would explain the trend in recent months.
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