Amazon and Synopsys ink multi-year billion-dollar deal in multi-year IP agreement to accelerate AI chip design efforts

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Tom’s Hardware • Jon Martindale • October 2, 2026

Amazon and chip design tool maker Synopsys are entering a multi-year deal, said to be worth over a billion dollars, in which the two companies will deepen their cooperation on AI chip design, while better optimizing their tools for one another’s services. As part of the deal, Amazon will license Synopsys’ IP and expand its use of Synopsys’ electronic design automation (EDA) software tools for AI chip design and agentic AI technologies.

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Sony brings AI-powered upscaling to the standard PS5

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Tom’s Hardware • Kunal Khullar • October 2, 2026

The PlayStation 5 is getting AI-driven upscaling, giving base console owners access to the technology that was previously available on the more powerful PlayStation 5 Pro. In a blog post , Sony introduced Quick Spectral Super Resolution (QSSR), a new version of its AI upscaling technology for the PS5, with Marvel’s Wolverine and Ghost of Yōtei being the first games to support it.

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BiWin’s CL 100 Mini is a particularly puny but potent SSD for portable gaming

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Tom’s Hardware • Bruno Ferreira • October 2, 2026

Owning a PC gaming handheld is quite handy, but sometimes involves playing uncalled-for matches of Tetris with the internal storage, especially as games get larger. Storage expansion often comes by way of microSD cards, which can be added without opening the console, but can be slower than NVMe SSDs. BiWin’s CL 100 Mini NVMe SSD tackles both those problems, arriving in a 15 x 17 mm form factor with custom casing. It’s effectively the size of a microSD card.

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California tech CEO arrested, faces up to 20 years in prison for smuggling $300 million in Nvidia AI servers to China

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Tom’s Hardware • Etiido Uko • October 2, 2026

A California man has been arrested for smuggling over $300 million worth of restricted Nvidia chips to China in violation of U.S. export controls. According to a U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) press release on October 1, the defendant — Greg Lui, also known as Yiu Kong Lui — and unidentified co-conspirators smuggled the chips in high-end servers from 2023 to 2024.

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Leaked Intel Nova Lake product list has three ‘BFC’ chips with up to 144MB of game-boosting L3 cache

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Tom’s Hardware • Jake Roach • October 2, 2026

A rumored SKU table for Intel’s upcoming Nova Lake desktop CPUs has surfaced, showcasing seven models that will (presumably) make up Intel’s initial NVL-S lineup. The list includes three models with the "BFC" tag, which seems to be Intel’s branding for bLLC, or big last level cache. It’s been heavily rumored to show up with Nova Lake, countering AMD’s assault on the best CPUs for gaming with its X3D chips.

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ChatGPT-6 Astra plays World of Warcraft ‘blind’ and clears the orc starting zone in 40 minutes with no deaths

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Tom’s Hardware • Shane Downing • October 3, 2026

OpenAI’s GPT-6 Astra AI model was able to clear the Orc starting area in World of Warcraft (WoW) in 40 minutes with 0 deaths, agent-wow’s developer says. The model played the zone without seeing a single rendered frame, relying on network traffic and quest data pulled from the server’s own files. The approach used a single prompt in Codex with agent-wow, an open-source client, to play on a private server.

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Amazon promises to spend $1 billion on communities close to its data centers, but critics push back

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Tom’s Hardware • Jowi Morales • October 3, 2026

Amazon announced a new community program called “Built Together,” where the company promised to invest $1 billion over the next five years on data center communities. According to the company blog post , it will provide the funding to the residents while they determine the best use of the funds to be allocated, including projects that reduce electricity bills.

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California subpoenas OpenAI over rogue AI agents conducting hacking attacks

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Tom’s Hardware • Jowi Morales • October 3, 2026

The California Department of Justice (DOJ) has subpoenaed OpenAI as it investigates the recent cybersecurity incidents involving the company’s AI models and agents. According to The Register , state Attorney General Rob Bonta said that the state wants to learn more about the cybersecurity incidents involving the company and that the investigation is trying to determine the responsibility of an AI developer if an AI model or agent does something unintended.

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