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Headlining our coverage this week is our story from Laptop expert Andrew Freedman, in his exploration of how and why Apple has chosen 2026 as the time to release an OLED — excuse me — PROLED display, with touch. After all, touch is a feature that Windows laptops have sported for well over a decade, along with OLED displays, offering unparalleled contrast ratios when compared to any other panel technology. In this feature, he explores the justifications and the likelihood of Apple slowly trickling the "brand-new" functionality to its suite of devices.

• Apple finally has a touchscreen MacBook. Why now?

Last month, Micron revealed its brand-new product roadmap, featuring new DRAM devices, 3D NAND, the use of high-NA EUV lithography tools, and much more. NAND and DRAM are both incredibly hot topics, due to the ongoing rush to build faster, more capable AI accelerators, with Micron as one of the companies benefiting from the rush in demand. We go into detail about its 1δ DRAM, which is set to be manufactured on American shores. Beyond that, the company has also demonstrated its 11th-Gen NAND, which sports over 400 layers. With the next few years of its technologies explored in unrelenting technical detail, this roadmap details exactly where Micron's upcoming projects are, and where it's going next.

• Micron details ambitious DRAM and NAND roadmap — 3D NAND, High-NA EUV, new materials, and custom silicon makes a comeback

While ASML's EUV lithography machines remain in high demand, the company's latest technology, FDX Fusion, instead relies on tried-and-true DUV. Semiconductor expert Anton Shilov sits down with GlobalFoundries VP Sudipto Bose to detail the new tech, which boasts 7nm-class performance using advanced planar transistors, with broad applications across a range of devices, including within the data center. This unredacted interview transcript explores the hows and whys behind GlobalFoundries' decision to advance its FDX Fusion technologies without going down the EUV route, as many companies are currently doing, and offers an insider look at what the company might be planning in the future.

• GlobalFoundries VP details FDX Fusion technology, sporting 7nm-class performance without the need for EUV tools — company targets 2030 for high-volume manufacturing, with planar transistors in tow

Luckily, it's not all about data centers and the technologies therein, as there are actual, new consumer PC parts that we're expecting to hit the market sometime in 2027. Of course, Intel's Nova Lake platform is abuzz with rumors over its boost clocks and big last-level cache (bLLC), which is touted as the company's answer to AMD's hugely popular X3D chips.

But a new platform means new motherboards and new chipsets to get your head around. For those brave enough to be considering a new PC upgrade in this economy, we explore everything that we currently know about Nova Lake's associated motherboards, which come alongside a brand-new socket and a suite of features up and down all budget ranges.

• Intel’s next-gen Nova Lake needs new motherboards — what we expect from Nova Point and Z990, Z970, and B960 chipsets

Marvell has signed an agreement to acquire optics company Lumentum, at a value of $115 billion. The move would combine two of the biggest players in the optical market into a single company. However, the deal would significantly impact Marvell's overall optical infrastructure portfolio, especially in the realm of in-house laser manufacturing. As companies rush to build both scale-up and scale-out domains, optics remains a huge part of the AI connectivity puzzle, as copper hits its natural limits. We explore all aspects of the proposed merger in our detailed analysis.

• Marvell to buy Lumentum in $115 billion all-stock deal — combined company to supply scale-up and scale-in optics for AI data centersv

We've previously covered how much AI is disrupting cybersecurity, and the recent PHP vulnerability is merely the latest in a string of critical issues found in commonplace pieces of software, much of which forms the foundation of the modern internet. We tear apart and examine The PHP Foundation's post-mortem of the issue, their response, and more.

• PHP vulnerability post-mortem reveals bug was known two years ago — Small team of maintainers knew of the issue before it was made public, as new PHP2Shell chained exploit ravages servers

Google's Gemini 4 Carbon AI model recently topped charts as being one of the most capable frontier AI models out there. Google has historically been a laggardly competitor in the overall AI frontier race, with much more irregular releases than the likes of Anthropic or OpenAI. We explore how Gemini 4 Carbon fares in the grand AI thunderdome, and where it might have some advantages, such as being the model least likely to hallucinate.

• Google reveals new Gemini 4 Carbon AI model, narrowly beating Claude Opus 5.5 — frontier AI model is also the least likely to hallucinate, benchmarks claim

A Pat Gelsinger-backed company, Nagare Labs, has recently showcased a new type of memory named Z2RAM. It can achieve rapid, SRAM-like speeds, with the same density benefits as DRAM. The product is still in early testing, with the latest published figures and roadmap pointing toward the device potentially becoming an alternative to High Bandwidth Flash (HBF). We explore all elements of the published design documents in our technical analysis.

• Gelsinger-backed Nagare Labs’ capacitorless Z2RAM promises SRAM speed with DRAM density — latest published cell retains data for over 300 seconds at 85°C, but further figures are projected

To read any of the articles we mention above, as well as unlock Bench, you'll need to purchase a Tom's Hardware Premium subscription. Your support goes a long way in helping us to publish deeper, more insightful articles that might not otherwise be covered.

Nvidia chief Jensen Huang is the center of a new controversy as the U.S. intelligence community believes that he had a romantic relationship with a suspected Chinese spy. According to the Financial Times, Alice Huang, sometimes referred to as Huang Le, was a top executive at Singaporean firm Megaspeed and was reportedly romantically involved with the CEO of the world's largest AI chip manufacturer. Notably, Jensen is currently married to his wife of 41 years, Lori Huang. It’s unclear whether Alice Huang was recruited by the Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS) before she joined Megaspeed or after she had already established a business relationship with Jensen, but it’s been reported that the suspected agent was apparently targeting the Nvidia head to help Chinese companies gain access to banned AI chips.

Megaspeed has been accused of smuggling $2 billion worth of AI chips into China via its subsidiary Speedmatrix, although Nvidia insists the company has no ties to China. Megaspeed sits at the center of a web of companies linked to China, and it was previously connected to a Chinese gaming company called 7Road International. It was founded in 2023 and reportedly owned by Huang Le Limited, led by Ms. Huang Le, or Alice Huang, before it was sold to Swiftdata that same year. The following year, Megaspeed used Speedmatrix to incorporate, with the subsidiary having two offices in Johor, Malaysia. The subsidiary is at the center of the smuggling allegations.

Research into Huang Le, or Alice Huang, has revealed inconsistencies. There were reports that she started her career as a TV journalist working for Hunan TV and Chinese state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV), but an executive at the former claims to have never heard of her, while she does not have a profile under the latter. After her supposed stint in media, she moved into banking and finance as assistant to the president of HSBC’s private banking division before becoming vice president at CITIC Securities, a Chinese financial services company. It’s unclear how she became involved with Megaspeed after that, but it seems Ms. Huang built a network of companies and investors around Shanghai and Zhejiang that aggressively pushed mobile gaming companies toward AI data centers.

Questions arose about how a small company like Megaspeed could commit so much to buying Nvidia AI GPUs seemingly out of nowhere, but it certainly caught Jensen Huang's attention. After the company made its massive order, Alice Huang was spotted in a LinkedIn post hanging out for drinks with Jensen Huang and other industry executives from Gigabyte and NetThunder. She was once again seen standing behind the Nvidia chief, alongside other people, one year later as he exited a Taiwan restaurant.

Nvidia has denied the allegations, saying Jensen Huang meets with thousands of customer executives annually and that they exchange ordinary business information — not sensitive Nvidia trade secrets or national security information. China has also said that these accusations of espionage on Jensen Huang by the MSS are just “groundless smears and slanders” against Beijing.

However, foreign intelligence agencies also routinely conduct “honeypot” operations, using operatives to ensnare targets into relationships to extract data and gain insight into industry secrets. While these operations traditionally targeted politicians, members of the military, and their staff, the Lansing Institute suggests that “China is employing ‘attractive women’ posing as investors, business professionals, academics, or romantic partners to gain access to U.S. tech talent, networks, and research infrastructure.”

It's November, which means we're officially in the season for deals on tech. While it's a few weeks before the big sales event starts, 3D printer manufacturers are already slashing their prices. If you fancied investing in a new 3D printer ahead of the holidays, Elegoo's big sale has started, and it's slashing prices by as much as 54%, according to its website.

The combo deals are where you're going to save cash. Not only has the company cut the cost of a new resin or filament 3D printer, but it's also coupling the consumables you'll need to print with them. For instance, you can pick up an Elegoo Centauri Carbon 2 bundle with 1KG of filament for $270, with the filament only costing you $1. The same applies to its resin printers, too, with a similar deal on the Elegoo Saturn 4 Ultra 16K for $400.

● Check out Elegoo's 3D printer deals

Elegoo is a big name in the 3D printing world, with some of its models sitting in our best 3D printer guide. These discounts make it a brilliant time to invest in a new printer, whether you're a beginner starting out or a seasoned pro looking to expand their setup further.

Yes, this is officially Elegoo's Black Friday sales event, and it'll be running until December 1, but there's no guarantee that the printers themselves will still be around by then. We've seen stock dry up in previous events from the big brands before the sales are over, so if you want a printer to arrive before the holidays, you'll need to make sure you get your order in sooner, rather than later.

To help you pick, we've put together a list of some of the best Elegoo 3D printers currently on sale below.

Best Elegoo 3D Printer Deals

Best Elegoo 3D Printer Filament and Resin Deals

Every once in a while we get a drive that comes across our desk that stands out, for good or for bad. The TeamGroup GA Pro falls into the latter category, enough so that we re-checked our results and contacted the company. We’ve managed to mostly sort out what’s going on and, while this is not the worst drive around, it has enough problems that we would generally not recommend it except if it's on steep sale.

TeamGroup’s array of storage offerings knows no bounds: if there’s a niche to cover, it makes an attempt. The GA Pro feels like such a try, although we’re not completely sure where it fits into the mix. The company is still working to iron out the bugs, if it can, but the technology is old enough that we wouldn’t hold our breath. On paper, it’s a PCIe 5.0 drive with DRAM that should beat any PCIe 4.0 SSD, but we found it struggles to live up to its own class of drive. Bright points are few and far between, but at least we can say it’s not the worst drive we’ve seen. The edges are just rougher than usual.

TeamGroup GA Pro Specifications

The TeamGroup GA Pro is available in 1TB, 2TB, 4TB, and 8TB capacities, although we only have the 2TB showing up at $331.99 at retail right now. The 8TB will probably be hard to find at this point. The drive is rated for up to 10,000 / 8,500 MB/s for sequential reads and writes, with no IOPS rating, although a drive like this can achieve 1 million or more. It has the standard five-year warranty with up to 600 TB of writes per TB of capacity.

TeamGroup GA Pro Software and Accessories

TeamGroup has a number of downloads available for this range of drives, which is better than nothing. They do maintain firmware for their drives, and we made sure our test sample had the newest revision, 050g05E7. Also available is the SSD S.M.A.R.T. TOOL, which is their SSD toolbox with basic functions, such as health monitoring. For backup and cloning on Windows, we continue to recommend MultiDrive, which continues to be updated based on user feedback.

TeamGroup GA Pro: A Closer Look

The good news is, the GA Pro has a graphene heat-spreading label. The bad news is, it’s insufficient to cool this drive. In most cases, you will want a heatsink on this. You can use a heatsink with the label in place, but you will have better luck if it’s removed. We are fond of graphene labels as they can be surprisingly effective, but it’s just not enough here.

Then we have the label which, with the 3.3V / 2.5A rating, puts the drive at a very optimistic 8.25W. We measured over 12.5W peak in our testing below. We can’t go by reported power states, as these top off at 3.50 W. Since we can’t rely on that, we can’t say for sure what even the expected enter/exit latencies are, relevant given TeamGroup’s claims about the drive, which we’ll get to later. The drive is otherwise double-sided with a controller, two DRAM packages, and four NAND flash packages.

The SSD controller is InnoGrit’s IG5666, the company’s answer to the Phison E26 high-end PCIe 5.0 champion. We have better controllers in that segment now, like the E28 and SMI’s SM2508, but even at the time of release, the IG5666 was not very popular. Both the E26 and IG5666 run very hot due to using an older process node, and newer flash wasn’t available yet to more easily reach the bus speeds needed. The GA Pro is not running full-out but, to be honest, that doesn’t help much. Phison put a lot of work into getting the E26 up to full speed in steps, and even the base 10 GB/s ones run toasty.

The drive does have the right amount of DDR4, 2GB, for this amount of flash. No problems there. The flash also looks to be YMTC’s 232-layer TLC, which is also perfectly fine. The controller is the weak spot here and, as we’ll find out, its firmware really keeps the GA Pro from reaching its full potential, even with its bandwidth cap.

MORE: Best SSDs

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Comparison Products

We’re throwing a mix of drives today at the GA Pro, in the interest of finding out why it performs the way it does. Direct competitors include the Crucial T700 and Corsair MP700, two Phison E26-based drives. The MP700 is rated at around the same speeds as the GA Pro, while the T700 is a step up, about halfway from there to the E26’s 14 GB/s effective ceiling. We also have the TeamGroup GE Pro sibling as a drive with similar hardware to the GA Pro but rated for the InnoGrit IG5666 controller’s full speed. The Addlink G55, PNY CS2150, and Crucial P510 also hover around the same specs but are later-arriving, DRAM-less drives. We also have the Lexar NM1090 Pro (4TB) in the mix as it’s a high-end PCIe 5.0 drive, but considered slightly more budget-leaning. Finally, the TeamGroup G70 Pro is our PCIe 4.0 stand-in for a last-gen comparison, from the same company and also with an InnoGrit controller.

Trace Testing — 3DMark Storage Benchmark

Built for gamers, 3DMark’s Storage Benchmark focuses on real-world gaming performance. Each round in this benchmark stresses storage based on gaming activities including loading games, saving progress, installing game files, and recording gameplay video streams. Future gaming benchmarks will be DirectStorage-inclusive and an evaluation for future-proofing is included where applicable.

There’s no doubt about it; the GA Pro’s response here is quite poor. The drive’s score of 1,428 puts it pretty close to the SATA SSD range of around 1,000 to 1,400, and second to last of the 242 NVMe drives in our database. Now, this is plenty fast for gaming and much better than using an HDD, but it’s also terrible for an NVMe SSD, and we would not recommend it for this.

Right out of the gate, we began to question this drive’s results. We switched up our comparison drives, re-ran the tests, and ultimately contacted TeamGroup. In theory, this score is what we would expect given their explanation, which was that the drive was designed for CDM, ATTO, and sustained writes to get the most out of its bandwidth potential. The firmware being used drops the drive into a lower power state when the host is idle, and this can add unwanted command latency. That matches the 3DMark latency result.

Optimizing for certain workloads makes sense, but we don’t think this result is defensible. The likeliest reason for any such design, beyond the stated one, would be to handle heat. This controller runs hotter than any other PCIe 5.0 one we’ve tested. So, this is almost OEM-drive-like behavior, in the sense that it’s really trying to keep the drive within a certain envelope. We think the firmware is not operating as intended, but we at least accept the theory.

Trace Testing — PCMark 10 Storage Benchmark

PCMark 10 is an industry standard trace-based benchmark that uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and everyday tasks to measure the performance of storage devices. The results are particularly useful when analyzing drives for their use as primary/boot storage devices and in work environments.

We see the same issue in PCMark. Terrible latency leads to terrible overall results. The drive may not be slow intrinsically, but it might as well be considered as such.

Our hypothesis here, since the problem is consistent, is that the drive is unintentionally throttling. Usually this happens due to heat, but saying “heat” is not fully addressing the problem. That is, it’s not necessarily the heat causing the issue but how the drive and firmware detect and handle it. We remember the days of prototype PCIe 5.0 controllers, mainly from Phison, where flash temperatures were not properly calibrated and caused unintentional throttling. It’s possible something similar is happening here, given how hot the controller runs (see our power and temperature section), but the early takeaway for now is that this is a “solved” problem that InnoGrit is struggling with on this drive for one reason or another.

Console Testing — PlayStation 5 Transfers

The PlayStation 5 is capable of taking one additional PCIe 4.0 or faster SSD for extra game storage. While any 4.0 drive will technically work, Sony recommends drives that can deliver at least 5,500 MB/s of sequential read bandwidth for optimal performance. Based on our extensive testing, PCIe 5.0 SSDs don’t bring much to the table and generally shouldn’t be used in the PS5, especially as they may require additional cooling. Check our Best PS5 SSDs article for more information.

Our testing utilizes the PS5’s internal storage test and manual read/write tests with over 192GB of data both from and to the internal storage. Throttling is prevented where possible to see how each drive operates under ideal conditions. While game load times should not deviate much from drive to drive, our results can indicate which drives may be more responsive in long-term use.

We usually don’t worry about the PS5 with PCIe 5.0 drives, as even the slowest ones are plenty for the console, but we wanted to be sure with this one. The drive works but does not perform that well. Given how brief this testing can be, and because it’s limited to PCIe 4.0 speeds, we don’t believe the drive is throttling. It’s more likely the same latency issue we saw in the trace tests, or a larger firmware issue.

Transfer Rates — DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test file transfer performance with a custom 50GB dataset. We write 31,227 files of various types, such as pictures, PDFs, and videos to the test drive, then make a copy of that data to a new folder, and follow up with a reading test of a newly written 6.5GB zip file. This is a real-world type workload that fits into the cache of most drives.

The GA Pro also ends up dead last in DiskBench, which also requires explanation. The drive has a very small cache for its size and generation, something that is also OEM- or NAS-like rather than what we’d expect from a normal retail drive, but it’s large enough to fit this test. Either the cache was not fully emptied in testing, which generally would also be linked to firmware, or we’re having more issues here from the previously mentioned flaw. The drive is also slower with reads because the reads in this test are at a queue depth of 1, where the drive is known to have issues; this was affirmed by TeamGroup when we asked.

Synthetic Testing — ATTO / CrystalDiskMark

ATTO and CrystalDiskMark (CDM) are free and easy-to-use storage benchmarking tools that SSD vendors commonly use to assign performance specifications to their products. Both of these tools give us insight into how each device handles different file sizes and at different queue depths for both sequential and random workloads.

The GA Pro isn’t actually all bad here, with reasonable ATTO curves and even some okay marks in CDM. 4KB latency is still higher than expected, and that hurts this drive for everyday use. On the other hand, it can mete out some decent sequential performance, especially at QD8. TeamGroup told us that this is what the drive was designed for, so that lines up. Keep in mind, this drive isn’t going to keep up with PCIe 5.0 drives rated for higher speeds. Instead, to keep it on the positive side, at QD8 it does very well against drives with similar specs.

Sustained Write Performance and Cache Recovery

Official write specifications are only part of the performance picture. Most SSDs implement a write cache, which is a fast area of pseudo-SLC (single-bit) programmed flash that absorbs incoming data. Sustained write speeds can suffer tremendously once the workload spills outside of the cache and into the "native" TLC (three-bit) or QLC (four-bit) flash. Performance can suffer even more if the drive is forced to fold, the process of migrating data out of the cache in order to free up space for further incoming data.

We use Iometer to hammer the SSD with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure both the size of the write cache and performance after the cache is saturated. We also monitor cache recovery via multiple idle rounds. This process shows the performance of the drive in various states including the steady state write performance.

The GA Pro’s fastest mode, pSLC, or what’s called the cache, writes at around 9.2 GB/s. This is respectable for the drive’s speed class and beats any PCIe 4.0 drive, but also doesn’t set records. It only writes at this speed for approximately 7 seconds, which is incredibly short, and means the cache is only about 69 GB in size. This is small in general, small for a 2TB drive, and very small for a modern, PCIe 5.0 drive. It’s not unheard of, as we’ve seen caches around this size on some drives to improve “quality of service,” which basically means keeping the drive performing consistently even when the cache runs out.

We don’t see that, per se, after the cache runs out here. The drive initially acts in an erratic manner, although eventually it does hit a steady speed around 2.5 GB/s. This isn’t too bad, but the drive should be able to muster a little bit more: the G70 Pro, with the same YMTC flash and an even smaller cache, manages about 2.75 GB/s. Still, it’s fast enough to be useful for some applications. TeamGroup suggested this is one area the drive was designed to be good at, and while we can’t agree with that 100%, we do think its current arrangement is, on paper, good for something like write caching. It would be better if things were smoothed out, maybe through firmware, and we would absolutely recommend a good heatsink for that type of workload on this drive.

Power Consumption and Temperature

We use the Quarch HD Programmable Power Module to gain a deeper understanding of power characteristics. Idle power consumption is an important aspect to consider, especially if you're looking for a laptop upgrade, as even the best ultrabooks can have mediocre stock storage in terms of capacity and performance. Desktops are often more performance-oriented with less support for power-saving features, so we show the worst-case for idle.

Some SSDs can consume watts of power at idle while better-suited ones sip just milliwatts. Average workload power consumption and max consumption are two other aspects of power consumption, but performance-per-watt, or efficiency, is more important. A drive might consume more power during any given workload, but accomplishing a task faster allows the drive to drop into an idle state more quickly, ultimately saving energy.

For temperature recording, we currently poll the drive’s primary composite sensor during testing with a ~22°C ambient. Our testing is rigorous enough to heat the drive to a realistic ceiling temperature, but real-world temperatures will vary due to the environment and workload factors.

At this point in the review, you’re probably thinking to yourself: I bet the GA Pro isn’t very power-efficient, either. You’d be correct; it finishes last in our lineup. That comes down to its slow DiskBench copy speed, which our efficiency metric is based on, paired with high power draw: the GA Pro averages 6.32W, fourth-highest in our lineup, and peaks at 12.53W, the highest. Also, its hardware is already known to be inefficient even compared to comparables like a Phison E26 and Micron TLC on the MP700; see the GE Pro. We also don’t really expect great power efficiency out of a drive like this. That said, yeah, don’t get this drive if you care about that. One thing we’ll add is that TeamGroup’s claim about latency fits the results here: the GA Pro’s idle power consumption is significantly better than the GE Pro’s.

Temperature-wise, well, what can we say? The three sensors reported maximum temperatures of 61, 72, and 92 degrees Celsius. The 92-degree reading is most likely the controller, which held at 88 degrees or higher for over 90% of our sustained write test. The drive’s 90-degree warning threshold applies to the composite sensor, which peaked at 72 degrees, and it stayed below that threshold. But the controller holding steady at around 89 degrees in some cases suggests the firmware may be working around that temperature instead. Either way, yes, this drive runs hot. Mind, this is with cooling, so you would definitely want to be prepared to handle this one.

Test Bench and Testing Notes

We use an Alder Lake platform with most background applications such as indexing, Windows updates, and antivirus disabled in the OS to reduce run-to-run variability. Each SSD is prefilled to 50% capacity and tested as a secondary device. Unless noted, we use active cooling for all SSDs.

TeamGroup GA Pro Bottom Line

We test many, many drives and only rarely, exceptionally, do we consider giving out a perfect score. That’s because the perfect drive is essentially a unicorn. The same goes the other way, too: to get our very worst rating, a drive would have to be truly awful. Now, the TeamGroup GA Pro is among the worst drives I’ve handled in my tenure, but I’ve heard of many worse. Drives that fail at the drop of a hat, ones plagued with firmware issues, ones with low-grade flash, ones with PCIe 3.0 or worse performance. They exist, and the GA Pro is not one of these. We also reviewed tons of drives from TeamGroup; this is a known brand that also communicated to us the need for a firmware revision, which makes us feel like the InnoGrit controller choice is the biggest issue here.

The GA Pro is an odd drive, anyway, because it’s not fast for a PCIe 5.0 drive. It’s at first-gen speeds for the high-end drives in this class, with the next two steps being 12 and 14 GB/s or so, and it ends up competing with later-arriving 10 GB/s drives that are DRAM-less and far more efficient. If you’re looking at a chart of drive generations like it was showing an evolution, this drive is halfway to being a dinosaur at this point. If we look at the problems Phison had early with the E26, we can see some misstep overlaps here. Our feeling is that TeamGroup had a rough idea of what they wanted this drive to be, and there are many hints at that, like the small cache size, and the vision never panned out. Not surprising given the controller has never done well and the consumer SSD industry at this point is exceptionally bad.

No excuses here, though. Performance is very bad for this class in many areas, especially with low QD reads, presumably due to a latency issue, which hits the drive hard. Power efficiency is also pretty bad, not unexpected, though, and the drive runs hot. That’s also expected from this hardware.

On the other hand, sustained write performance is not terrible once it steadies out, and in some high-QD situations the drive even outperforms its spec. We think TeamGroup could have slotted this into a NAS-like category or even HEDT like other early PCIe 5.0 SSDs. The cache speaks to that, although we’ve seen some Phison-based drives use a smaller cache to smooth out write performance. Which means that TeamGroup may have been targeting a similar milieu, but of course putting the GA Pro up against an E31T drive, like the P510, makes little sense to us.

We cannot recommend the drive in its current form; it needs a firmware update. With that update, and if pricing is respectable, the drive has some niche applications. It could tank some higher QD sequential workloads and let you induce less wear on your better or more important drives. Certainly, most drives in this class have massive caches, and that’s not always a good thing. The problem is we would still probably go with those over a GA Pro even where they may be slower. This drive feels more like one you find $100 off on a sale that seems like a misprice some random Sunday, in which case, well, you could do worse.

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Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is a man who likely attends numerous meetings, and today one more was added to his busy schedule. The U.S. Congress wants to have a closed-door chat with Huang over mounting concerns about national security. The congressmen bidding for his time say last week's report spurred the move that he may be the target of espionage by a reported Chinese asset: Megaspeed exec Alice Huang (family unrelated).

The meeting was set up by Republican House representatives John Moolenaar, Brian Mast, and Rick Crawford, respective Chairs of the House committees on China, Foreign Affairs, and Intelligence. In the House's letter on the matter, the lawmakers say the aforementioned reports "raise significant national security concerns" about China gaining access to U.S. technology and information.

The previously reported claim is that Alice Huang is a Chinese plant in Singaporean data center outfit Megaspeed, siphoning information to Beijing. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) further claims that she was recruited by Chinese authorities due to her existing relationship with Jensen Huang.

Megaspeed reportedly bought and continues to buy billions' worth of Nvidia's chips, according to The New York Times (NYT), and stands accused by the Department of Commerce since 2024 of smuggling $2 billion worth of advanced silicon to China.

The backdrop for the situation is that the U.S. has long-standing export controls blocking Nvidia and AMD's most advanced AI accelerator chips from reaching China, among a number of other nations. The allegations were first published last week in the NYT, and are reportedly sourced from unnamed U.S. intelligence officials.

The House says the purpose of the briefing with Jensen Huang is to discuss "Nvidia's security protocols against foreign adversary espionage and [his] interactions with [...] Alice Huang." According to the NYT, the CEO never got a "defensive briefing," essentially a warning for potential targets of foreign espionage, to acquaint them with signs of such activities.

The publication notes that intelligence officials often hesitate to inform potential targets of espionage, as doing so may make the spy aware they're being investigated. The NYT adds that President Trump was briefed on the situation surrounding Megaspeed and Alice Huang a year ago, but chose not to act on it.

According to the WSJ, Singaporean authorities opened their own probe into Megaspeed, and even reportedly questioned Alice Huang directly. However, an official response from the country told the WSJ that it "does not implement unilateral export controls imposed by foreign jurisdictions," adding that while it's investigating Megaspeed, it's not targeting Alice Huang herself or inspecting her claimed ties with Jensen Huang or China.

The Singaporean does note that the country has "a zero-tolerance stance" on commercial fraud, pointing out that it's charged four companies and four individuals over such wrongdoings, and that they may face up to 20 years in prison.

Meanwhile, Taiwan is also seemingly keeping a close eye on Alice Huang, by inspecting her visits to the nation. The WSJ says that the country's authorities are probing her involvement with China and have her under physical surveillance.

As for Nvidia, the company seemingly reposted today the same comments it offered us last week, stating that "meetings with customers are part of a CEO's job; Jensen talks with thousands of customer executives every year." The firm adds that "[its] regional cloud customers receive ordinary business information — not sensitive NVIDIA trade secrets — and zero information relevant to national security."

A recent report from The Information suggested that TSMC is exploring 3D DRAM production at Nvidia's request as surging demand for AI hardware strains global DRAM supplies and drives up prices. If the proposal were to come to fruition, it could mean a new, albeit prone to cyclical risks, business for TSMC and could dramatically expand its role in the AI supply chain. For its part, TSMC states that it is a pure-play logic foundry and plans to remain a logic foundry, which essentially means a denial of the report.

"Please note that TSMC focuses on our core business at all times, which is dedicated IC foundry," a TSMC spokesperson told Tom's Hardware. "Our mission is to be the trusted technology and capacity provider of the global logic IC industry for years to come."

Despite the denial, according to two people familiar with the initiative cited by The Information, TSMC has begun preparing plans for 3D DRAM manufacturing following a request from Nvidia, its largest customer. The initiative is reportedly overseen by Hsu Kuo-chin, TSMC’s vice president responsible for advanced packaging and former head of Micron’s Taiwanese operations. The effort comes amid widespread memory shortages that turned memory from a commodity into a strategic asset that could determine whether a company can ship its products to customers or not.

Although TSMC works closely with DRAM producers as it packages memory into system-in-packages (SiPs) for its customers, the company lacks the expertise and production capacity to make DRAM, let alone 3D DRAM. Meanwhile, given that 3D DRAM is years away even for major memory makers, pursuing a 3D DRAM strategy cannot solve memory shortages for at least five years.

Unlike conventional DRAM, which arranges memory cells in a single plane, 3D DRAM places multiple levels of memory cells vertically to increase capacity per wafer. All three leading DRAM makers — Micron, Samsung, and SK hynix — are working on their 3D DRAM projects. However, Micron's DRAM strategy includes at least four more planar DRAM process technologies before 3D DRAM becomes a reality.

While TSMC has arguably the industry's best logic process technologies, DRAM production requires entirely different manufacturing processes, which TSMC would have to develop, should it pursue making memory for its customers. Meanwhile, producing 3D DRAM requires completely different fabrication techniques to construct multiple memory-cell layers while controlling defects and maintaining acceptable yields. It is hardly possible to develop a 3D DRAM manufacturing process without having a competitive planar DRAM process technology, and TSMC does not have one.

One of the options for TSMC to enter the DRAM business would be to acquire a small specialty memory producer that has its own fabrication capability. This would give TSMC a credible route into advanced DRAM manufacturing without having to develop the underlying memory technology and IPs from scratch. However, small makers do not have leading-edge commodity DRAM nodes, so TSMC would still need to invest billions of dollars and years of R&D into development of a leading-edge process technology for DRAM.

However, entering DRAM manufacturing would expose TSMC to substantial market risks. Memory shortages frequently encourage capacity expansions that eventually create oversupply, depressing prices and profitability. Such uncertainty could surely make TSMC think twice before going down the DRAM route. Furthermore, entering the DRAM business could also complicate TSMC's relationship with large DRAM makers in general, and SK Hynix, which partnered with the foundry in 2024 to manufacture logic base dies for next-generation HBM products, in particular.

TSMC’s potential entry into DRAM manufacturing could also raise antitrust questions, particularly if the company combines its dominant position in leading-edge logic manufacturing, leading position in advanced chip packaging, and ramping memory production. Regulators could examine whether such vertical integration would enable TSMC to favor its own memory products or disadvantage competitors that lack such a vertical integration. Then again, in-house DRAM development by TSMC could also strengthen competition by introducing another supplier into a market dominated by just three manufacturers.

Yet, TSMC does not necessarily need to manufacture DRAM to capitalize on growing demand for advanced memory. Instead, it could capture a larger share of the value generated by DRAM by producing sophisticated logic base dies for HBM, integrating memory with processors using its SoIC hybrid bonding technology, and developing customized memory solutions with partners such as GUC and established DRAM manufacturers. This approach would allow TSMC to expand its presence in the advanced memory market without investing billions of dollars in developing competitive DRAM process technologies from scratch and/or building additional fabs for tens of billions of dollars.