Artificial intelligence could soon outpace Bitcoin mining in energy consumption, according to Alex de Vries-Gao, a PhD candidate at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam's Institute for Environmental Studies. His research estimates that by the end of 2025, AI could account for nearly half of all electricity used by data centers worldwide -- raising significant concerns about its impact on global climate goals.

"While companies like Google and Microsoft disclose total emissions, few provide transparency on how much of that is driven specifically by AI," notes DIGIT. To fill this gap, de Vries-Gao employed a triangulation method combining chip production data, corporate disclosures, and industry analyst estimates to map AI's growing energy footprint.

His analysis suggests that specialized AI hardware could consume between 46 and 82 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 2025 -- comparable to the annual energy usage of countries like Switzerland. Drawing on supply chain data, the study estimates that millions of AI accelerators from NVIDIA and AMD were produced between 2023 and 2024, with a potential combined power demand exceeding 12 gigawatts (GW). A detailed explanation of his methodology is available in his commentary published in Joule.

unixbhaskar shares a report from Phoronix: The X86_NATIVE_CPU Kconfig build time option has been merged for the Linux 6.16 merge window as an easy means of enforcing "-march=native" compiler behavior on AMD and Intel processors to optimize your kernel build for the local CPU architecture/family of your system. For those wanting to "-march=native" your Linux kernel build on AMD/Intel x86_64 processors, the new CONFIG_X86_NATIVE_CPU option can be easily enabled for setting that compiler option on your local kernel builds.

The CONFIG_X86_NATIVE_CPU option is honored if compiling the Linux x86_64 kernel with GCC or LLVM Clang when using Clang 19 or newer due to a compiler bug with the Linux kernel on older compiler versions. In addition to setting the "-march=native" compiler option for the Linux kernel C code, enabling this new Kconfig build option also sets "-Ctarget-cpu=native" for the kernel's Rust code too. "It seems interesting though," comments unixbhaskar. "If the detailed benchmark shows some improvement with the option selected, then distros might start to adopt it for their flavor."

Valve's SteamOS 3.7.8 update brings official support for AMD-powered handhelds like Lenovo's Legion Go and Asus' ROG Ally, along with a new "Steam OS Compatible" library tab and key bug fixes. Other features include a battery charge limit, updated graphics drivers, and a shift to Plasma 6.2.5. Polygon reports: Valve outlines two requirements for the third-party devices not explicitly named in the update to run SteamOS on the handheld: they must be AMD-powered and have an NVMe SSD. Specific instructions for installing the operating system have been updated and listed here.

Before this huge update, players had to use an alternative like Bazzite to achieve a similar SteamOS experience on their devices. The new update also piggybacks off of Valve expanding the Steam Deck Verified categorization system to "any device running SteamOS that's not a Steam Deck" in mid-May. To make matters sweeter, a SteamOS-powered version of the Lenovo Legion Go S is scheduled to release on May 25. You can learn more about SteamOS 3.7.8 here.

Qualcomm announced plans to re-enter the data center market with custom CPUs designed to integrate with Nvidia GPUs and software. As CNBC reports, the move supports Qualcomm's broader strategy to diversify beyond smartphones and into high-growth areas like data centers, PCs, and automotive chips. From the report: "I think we see a lot of growth happening in this space for decades to come, and we have some technology that can add real value added," Cristiano Amon, CEO of Qualcomm, told CNBC in an interview on Monday. "So I think we have a very disruptive CPU." Amon said the company will make an announcement about the CPU roadmap and the timing of its release "very soon," without offering specifics. The data center CPU market remains highly competitive. Big cloud computing players like Amazon and Microsoft already design and deploy their own custom CPUs. AMD and Intel also have a strong presence.

Addressing the competition, Amon said that there will be a place for Qualcomm in the data center CPU space. "As long as ... we can build a great product, we can bring innovation, and we can add value with some disruptive technology, there's going to be room for Qualcomm, especially in the data center," Amon said. "[It] is a very large addressable market that will that will see a lot of investment for decades to come." Last week, Qualcomm signed a memorandum of understanding with Saudi-based AI frim Humain to develop data centers, joining a slew of U.S. tech companies making deals in the region. Humain will operate under Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund.

An anonymous reader shared this report from CRN: CPU-tracking firm Mercury Research reported on Thursday that Intel's x86 CPU market share grew 0.3 points sequentially to 75.6 percent against AMD's 24.4 percent in the first quarter. However, AMD managed to increase its market share by 3.6 points year over year. These figures only captured the server, laptop and desktop CPU segments. When including IoT and semicustom products, AMD grew its x86 market share sequentially by 1.5 points and year over year by 0.9 points to 27.1 percent against Intel's 72.9 percent... AMD managed to gain ground on Intel in the desktop and server segments sequentially and year over year. But it was in the laptop segment where Intel eked out a sequential share gain, even though rival AMD ended up finishing the first quarter with a higher share of shipments than what it had a year ago...

While AMD mostly came out on top in the first quarter, [Mercury Research President Dean] McCarron said ARM's estimated CPU share against x86 products crossed into the double digits for the first time, growing 2.3 points sequentially to 11.9 percent. This was mainly due to a "surge" of Nvidia's Grace CPUs for servers and a large increase of Arm CPU shipments for Chromebooks.
Meanwhile, PC Gamer reports that ARM's share of the PC processor market "grew to 13.6% in the first quarter of 2025 from 10.8% in the fourth quarter of 2024." And they note the still-only-rumors that an Arm-based chip from AMD will be available as soon next year. [I]f one of the two big players in x86 does release a mainstream Arm chip for the PC, that will very significant. If it comes at about the same time as Nvidia's rumoured Arm chip for the PC, well, momentum really will be building and questioning x86's dominance will be wholly justified.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: RIP, 486 processor. You've had a long run since Intel released you back in 1989. While Microsoft stopped supporting you with the release of Windows XP in 2001, Linux kept you alive and well for another 20+ years. But all good things must come to an end, and with the forthcoming release of the Linux 6.15 kernel, the 486 and the first Pentium processors will be sunsetted.

Why? Linus Torvalds wrote recently on the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML), "I really get the feeling that it's time to leave i486 support behind. There's zero real reason for anybody to waste one second of development effort on this kind of issue." Senior Linux kernel developer Ingo Molnar put Torvalds' remark into context, writing, "In the x86 architecture, we have various complicated hardware emulation facilities on x86-32 to support ancient 32-bit CPUs that very very few people are using with modern kernels. This compatibility glue is sometimes even causing problems that people spend time to resolve, which time could be spent on other things." "This will be the first time Linux has dropped support for a major chip family since 2012, when Linux stopped supporting the 386 family," notes ZDNet's Steven Vaughan-Nichols. "Moving forward, the minimum supported x86 CPU will now be the original Pentium (P5) or newer, requiring the presence of the Time Stamp Counter (TSC) and the CMPXCHG8B (CX8) instruction. These features are absent in the older 486 and early 586 processors, such as the IDT WinChip and AMD Elan families."

That said, you can continue running Linux on Pentium CPUs, but you'll have to "run museum kernels," as Torvalds pointed out in 2022 when he first floated the idea of ending support for 486.

According to Bloomberg, the Trump administration plans to revise a set of chip trade restrictions called the "AI diffusion" rule, which were scheduled to take effect on May 15. CNBC reports: The rule, which was proposed in the last days of the Biden administration, organizes countries into three different tiers, all of which have different restrictions on whether advanced AI chips like those made by Nvidia, AMD, and Intel can be shipped to the country without a license.

Chipmakers including Nvidia and AMD have been against the rule. AMD CEO Lisa Su told CNBC on Wednesday that the U.S. should strike a balance between restricting access to chips for national security and providing access, which will boost the American chip industry. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said earlier this week that being locked out of the Chinese AI market would be a "tremendous loss."

Microsoft has unveiled a substantial AI-focused update for Windows 11 and Copilot+ PCs, introducing features that leverage neural processing units across the operating system. The update centers on AI-powered helpers across core Windows apps, with an intelligent agent in Settings that can locate and adjust options via natural voice commands. Key additions include expanded Click To Do functionality, allowing users to draft Word content based on screen context, engage Reading Coach, or send details directly to Excel tables.

The Photos app gains a relight feature with support for three customizable light sources, while Paint adds object selection and text-to-sticker generation. Snipping Tool will automatically detect and crop prominent screen content, adding text extraction and color picking capabilities. System-level enhancements include an updated Start menu with phone companion integration, AI-powered actions in File Explorer for content summarization, and text generation in Notepad with new formatting options.

Most features will debut first on Windows Insider builds for Snapdragon-powered Copilot+ PCs before expanding to systems with AMD or Intel chips. Several tools, including Ask Copilot and Reading Coach, are already available to Insiders.

"Our future won't be handed to us," says the young narrator in a new ad from the nonprofit Code.org. "We will build it."

"But how can we when the education we need is still just an elective?" says another young voice...

The ad goes on to tout the power "to create with computer science and AI — the skills transforming every industry..." and ends by saying "This isn't radical. It's what education is supposed to do. Make computer science and AI a graduation requirement."

There's also a hard-hitting new web site, which urges people to sign a letter of support (already signed by executives from top tech companies including Microsoft, Dropbox, AMD, Meta, Blue Origin, and Palantir — and by Steve Ballmer, who is listed as the chairman of the L.A. Clippers basketball team).

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp says the letter ran in the New York Times, while this campaign will officially kick off Monday... Code.org teased the new Unlock8 campaign last month on social media as it celebrated a new Executive Order that makes K–12 AI literacy a U.S. priority, which it called a big win for CS & AI education, adding, "We've been building to this moment."

The move to make CS and AI a graduation requirement is a marked reversal of Code.org's early days, when it offered Congressional testimony on behalf of itself and tech-led Computing in the Core reassuring lawmakers that: "Making computer science courses 'count' would not require schools to offer computer science or students to study it; it would simply allow existing computer science courses to satisfy a requirement that already exists."

Longtime Slashdot reader me34point5 writes: OpenBSD quietly released the new version (7.7) of its "secure by default" operating system. This is the 58th release. Changes include improved hardware and VMM support, along with many kernel improvements. This release brings several specific improvements, including performance boosts on ARM64, Arm SVE support, AMD SEV virtualization enhancements, better low-memory handling on i386, and improved suspend/hibernate and SMP performance. It also updates graphics drivers with support for AMD Ryzen IA 300, Radeon RX 9070, and Intel Arrow Lake, along with expanded hardware support for MediaTek SoCs.

A full list of changes can be found here.

AMD has open-sourced its "GPU-IOV Module" for enabling SR-IOV-based virtualization on Instinct accelerators using the Linux kernel and KVM hypervisor, with features like GPU scheduling and VF/PF management. Notably, AMD plans to extend this virtualization support to client Radeon GPUs. Phoronix reports: The AMD GPU-IOV Module is for the Linux kernel and for providing SR-IOV based hardware virtualization in conjunction with the KVM hypervisor. GIM provides the GPU IOV virtualization, virtual function (VF) configuration and enablement, GPU scheduling for world switch, hang detection and FLR reset, and PF/VF handshake capabilities. Initially the AMD GIM driver is for the Instinct MI300X hardware and tested atop Ubuntu 22.04 LTS with ROCm 6.4. Those interested can find the AMD GIM code currently via GitHub. It's not laid out in the repository or any other public communications I've seen what any upstreaming plans are for this GIM driver to get it into the mainline Linux kernel.

The Trump administration is "taking measures to restrict the sale of AI chips by Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices and Intel," especially in China, reports the New York Times. But that's triggered a series of dominoes. "In the two days after the limits became public, shares of Nvidia, the world's leading AI chipmaker, fell 8.4%. AMD's shares dropped 7.4%, and Intel's were down 6.8%." (AMD expects up to $800 million in charges after the move, according to CNBC, while NVIDIA said it would take a quarterly charge of about $5.5 billion.)

The Times notes hopeful remarks Thursday from Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, during a meeting with the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade. "We're going to continue to make significant effort to optimize our products that are compliant within the regulations and continue to serve China's market." But America's chipmakers also have a greater fear, according to the article: "that their retreat could turn the Chinese tech giant Huawei into a global chip-making powerhouse." "For the U.S. semiconductor industry, China is gone," said Handel Jones, a semiconductor consultant at International Business Strategies, which advises electronics companies. He projects that Chinese companies will have a majority share of chips in every major category in China by 2030... Huang's message spoke to one of his biggest fears. For years, he has worried that Huawei, China's telecommunications giant, will become a major competitor in AI. He has warned U.S. officials that blocking U.S. companies from competing in China would accelerate Huawei's rise, said three people familiar with those meetings who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

If Huawei gains ground, Huang and others at Nvidia have painted a dark picture of a future in which China will use the company's chips to build AI data centers across the world for the Belt and Road Initiative, a strategic effort to increase Beijing's influence by paying for infrastructure projects around the world, a person familiar with the company's thinking said...

Nvidia's previous generation of chips perform about 40% better than Huawei's best product, said Gregory C. Allen, who has written about Huawei in his role as director of the Wadhwani AI Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. But that gap could dwindle if Huawei scoops up the business of its American rivals, Allen said. Nvidia was expected to make more than $16 billion in sales this year from the H20 in China before the restriction. Huawei could use that money to hire more experienced engineers and make higher-quality chips. Allen said the U.S. government's restrictions also could help Huawei bring on customers like DeepSeek, a leading Chinese AI startup. Working with those companies could help Huawei improve the software it develops to control its chips. Those kinds of tools have been one of Nvidia's strengths over the years.
TechRepublic identifies this key quote from an earlier article: "This kills NVIDIA's access to a key market, and they will lose traction in the country," Patrick Moorhead, a tech analyst with Moor Insights & Strategy, told The New York Times. He added that Chinese companies will buy from local rival Huawei instead.

"AMD processors were instrumental in achieving a new world record," reports Tom's Hardware, "during a recent Ansys Fluent computational fluid dynamics simulation run on the Frontier supercomputer at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory."

The article points out that Frontier was the fastest supercomputer in the world until it was beaten by Lawrence Livermore Lab's El Capitan — with both computers powered by AMD GPUs: According to a press release by Ansys, it ran a 2.2-billion-cell axial turbine simulation for Baker Hughes, an energy technology company, testing its next-generation gas turbines aimed at increasing efficiency. The simulation previously took 38.5 hours to complete on 3,700 CPU cores. By using 1,024 AMD Instinct MI250X accelerators paired with AMD EPYC CPUs in Frontier, the simulation time was slashed to 1.5 hours. This is more than 25 times faster, allowing the company to see the impact of the changes it makes on designs much more quickly...

Given those numbers, the Ansys Fluent CFD simulator apparently only used a fraction of the power available on Frontier. That means it has the potential to run even faster if it can utilize all the available accelerators on the supercomputer. It also shows that, despite Nvidia's market dominance in AI GPUs, AMD remains a formidable competitor, with its CPUs and GPUs serving as the brains of some of the fastest supercomputers on Earth.

Intel has unveiled a refresh of its iconic brand identity, introducing the slogan "That's the power of Intel Inside" to reconnect with consumers and highlight the chipmaker's role in modern computing. The new campaign resurrects the familiar "Intel Inside" theme that helped transform the company into a household name in the 1990s, when Intel's marketing strategy directly targeted consumers rather than system designers.

Brett Hannath, Intel's chief marketing officer, said the message reflects the company's belief that its products can unlock potential for employees, customers, consumers and partners. The original "Intel Inside" campaign, launched in 1991, revolutionized tech marketing by making processors a key selling point for PCs with its recognizable sticker and five-note jingle. The strategy helped Intel differentiate itself from competitors like AMD and Cyrix during the PC market explosion.

Despite promises of more efficient streaming, the AV1 video codec hasn't achieved widespread adoption seven years after its 2018 debut, even with backing from tech giants Netflix, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta. The Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia) claims AV1 is 30% more efficient than standards like HEVC, delivering higher-quality video at lower bandwidth while remaining royalty-free.

Major services including YouTube, Netflix, and Amazon Prime Video have embraced the technology, with Netflix encoding approximately 95% of its content using AV1. However, adoption faces significant hurdles. Many streaming platforms including Max, Peacock, and Paramount Plus haven't implemented AV1, partly due to hardware limitations. Devices require specific decoders to properly support AV1, though recent products from Apple, Nvidia, AMD, and Intel have begun including them. "In order to get its best features, you have to accept a much higher encoding complexity," Larry Pearlstein, associate professor at the College of New Jersey, told The Verge. "But there is also higher decoding complexity, and that is on the consumer end."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet, written by Steven Vaughan-Nichols: Despite the minor delay, Linux 6.14 arrives packed with cutting-edge features and improvements to power upcoming Linux distributions, such as the forthcoming Ubuntu 25.04 and Fedora 42. The big news for desktop users is the improved NTSYNC driver, especially those who like to play Windows games or run Windows programs on Linux. This driver is designed to emulate Windows NT synchronization primitives. What that feature means for you and me is that it will significantly improve the performance of Windows programs running on Wine and Steam Play. [...] Gamers always want the best possible graphics performance, so they'll also be happy to see that Linux now supports recently launched AMD RDNA 4 graphics cards. This approach includes support for the AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT and RX 9070 graphics cards. Combine this support with the recently improved open-source RADV driver and AMD gamers should see the best speed yet on their gaming rigs.

Of course, the release is not just for gamers. Linux 6.14 also includes several AMD and Intel processor enhancements. These boosts focus on power management, thermal control, and compute performance optimizations. These updates are expected to improve overall system efficiency and performance. This release also comes with the AMDXDNA driver, which provides official support for AMD's neural processing units based on the XDNA architecture. This integration enables efficient execution of AI workloads, such as convolutional neural networks and large language models, directly on supported AMD hardware. While Rust has faced some difficulties in recent months in Linux, more Rust programming language abstractions have been integrated into the kernel, laying the groundwork for future drivers written in Rust. [...] Besides drivers, Miguel Ojeda, Rust for Linux's lead developer, said recently that the introduction of the macro for smart pointers with Rust 1.84: derive(CoercePointee) is an "important milestone on the way to building a kernel that only uses stable Rust functions." This approach will also make integrating C and Rust code easier. We're getting much closer to Rust being grafted into Linux's tree.

In addition, Linux 6.14 supports Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon 8 Elite mobile processor, enhancing performance and stability for devices powered by this chipset. That support means you can expect to see much faster Android-based smartphones later this year. This release includes a patch for the so-called GhostWrite vulnerability, which can be used to root some RISC-V processors. This fix will block such attacks. Additionally, Linux 6.14 includes improvements for the copy-on-write Btrfs file system/logical volume manager. These primarily read-balancing methods offer flexibility for different RAID hardware configurations and workloads. Additionally, support for uncached buffered I/O optimizes memory usage on systems with fast storage devices. Linux 6.14 is available for download here.

The U.S. has added 80 entities to its export blacklist to prevent China from acquiring advanced American chips for military development, including AI, quantum tech, and hypersonic weapons. The Verge reports: More than 50 of the new entities added to the list are based in China, with others located in Iran, Taiwan, Pakistan, South Africa, and the United Arab Emirates. BIS says the restrictions have been applied to entities that acted "contrary to US national security and foreign policy," and are intended to hinder China's ability to develop high-performance computing capabilities, quantum technologies, advanced artificial intelligence, and hypersonic weapons.

Six of the newly blacklisted entities are subsidiaries of Inspur Group -- China's leading cloud computing service provider and a major customer for US chip makers such as Nvidia, AMD, and Intel -- which BIS alleges had contributed to projects developing supercomputers for the Chinese military. The Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence is another addition to the list, which has criticized its inclusion. "American technology should never be used against the American people," said Jeffrey Kessler, Under Secretary of Commerce for Industry and Security. "BIS is sending a clear, resounding message that the Trump administration will work tirelessly to safeguard our national security by preventing U.S. technologies and goods from being misused for high performance computing, hypersonic missiles, military aircraft training, and UAVs that threaten our national security."

"In a conversation with Tony Yu from Asus China, AMD CEO Lisa Su shared that the Radeon RX 9000 series graphics cards have quickly become a huge hit, breaking records as AMD's top-selling GPUs within just a week of release," writes Slashdot reader jjslash. TechSpot reports: AMD CEO Lisa Su has confirmed that the company's new Radeon RX 9000 graphics cards have been a massive success, selling 10 times more units than their predecessors in just one week on the market. Su also stated that more RDNA 4 cards are on the way, but did not confirm whether the lineup will include the rumored Radeon RX 9060. When asked about the limited availability of the new cards, Su said that AMD is ramping up production to ensure greater supply at retailers worldwide. She also expressed hope that increased availability would help stabilize pricing by discouraging scalping and price gouging.

prisoninmate shares a report: Highlights of Linux 6.14 include Btrfs RAID1 read balancing support, a new ntsync subsystem for Win NT synchronization primitives to boost game emulation with Wine, uncached buffered I/O support, and a new accelerator driver for the AMD XDNA Ryzen AI NPUs (Neural Processing Units).

Also new is DRM panic support for the AMDGPU driver, reflink and reverse-mapping support for the XFS real-time device, Intel Clearwater Forest server support, support for SELinux extended permissions, FUSE support for io_uring, a new fsnotify file pre-access event type, and a new cgroup controller for device memory.

Intel's stock jumped nearly 19% this week. "However, in the past year through Wednesday's close, Intel stock had fallen 53%," notes Investor's Business Daily: The appointment of Lip-Bu Tan as CEO is a "good start" but Intel has significant challenges, Morgan Stanley analyst Joseph Moore said in a client note. Those challenges include delays in its server chip product line, a very competitive PC chip market, lack of a compelling AI chip offering, and over $10 billion in losses in its foundry business over the past 12 months. There is "no quick fix" for those issues, he said.
"There are things you can do," a Columbia business school associate professor tells the Wall Street Journal in a video interview, "but it's going to be incremental, and it's going to be extremely risky... They will try to be competitive in the foundry manufacturing space," but "It takes very aggressive investments."

Meanwhile, TSMC is exploring a joint venture where they'd operate Intel's factories, even pitching the idea to AMD, Nvidia, Broadcam, and Qualcomm, according to Reuters. (They add that Intel "reported a 2024 net loss of $18.8 billion, its first since 1986," and talked to multiple sources "familiar with" talks about Intel's future). Multiple companies have expressed interest in buying parts of Intel, but two of the four sources said the U.S. company has rejected discussions about selling its chip design house separately from the foundry division. Qualcomm has exited earlier discussions to buy all or part of Intel, according to those people and a separate source. Intel board members have backed a deal and held negotiations with TSMC, while some executives are firmly opposed, according to two sources.
"They say Lip-Bu Tan is the best hope to fix Intel — if Intel can be fixed at all," writes the Wall Street Journal: He brings two decades of semiconductor industry experience, relationships across the sector, a startup mindset and an obsession with AI...and basketball. He also comes with tricky China business relationships, underscoring Silicon Valley's inability to sever itself from one of America's top adversaries... [Intel's] stock has lost two-thirds of its value in four short years as Intel sat out the AI boom...

Manufacturing chips is an enormous expense that Intel can't currently sustain, say industry leaders and analysts. Former board members have called for a split-up. But a deal to sell all or part of Intel to competitors seems to be off the table for the immediate future, according to bankers. A variety of early-stage discussions with Broadcom, Qualcomm, GlobalFoundries and TSMC in recent months have failed to go anywhere, and so far seem unlikely to progress. The company has already hinted at a more likely outcome: bringing in outside financial backers, including customers who want a stake in the manufacturing business...

Tan has likely no more than a year to turn the company around, said people close to the company. His decades of investing in startups and running companies — he founded a multinational venture firm and was CEO of chip design company Cadence Design Systems for 13 years — provide indications of how Tan will tackle this task in the early days: by cutting expenses, moving quickly and trying to turn Intel back into an engineering-first company. "In areas where we are behind the competition, we need to take calculated risks to disrupt and leapfrog," Tan said in a note to Intel employees on Wednesday. "And in areas where our progress has been slower than expected, we need to find new ways to pick up the pace...."

Many take this culture reset to also mean significant cuts at Intel, which already shed about 15,000 jobs last year. "He is brave enough to adjust the workforce to the size needed for the business today," said Reed Hundt, a former Intel board member who has known Tan since the 1990s.