New startup challenges Nvdia’s dominance on graphic cards

Pic/Bolt Graphic

A new Silicon Valley start-up called Bolt Graphics claims its upcoming graphic card, Zeus, is 10x faster in some workloads than the industry standard Nvidia. The graphic card features the company's latest chip made with the 4nm process. However, this PCIe Gen 5 card is kind of wild; it has an HDMI 2.1b port, DisplayPort 2.1b, RJ45 port, LPDDR5X on-board memory and a 400 Gbe optical port presumably for networking.

The wild part is that a bay lets you install additional DDR5 RAM to the board and another PCIe Gen 5 x16 port, which I assume would be for daisy-chaining the cards in a High-Performance computing situation. The claimed power draw is a measly 120W, which means it can run on a regular 8-pin PCIe power connector. Despite this card's obvious industrial applications, the company claims that it will also be available to gamers, which is interesting. The company will sell developer kits by the end of the year and start mass production in late 2026.

New sensor could make hydrogen fuel safer

Pic/University of Manchester

In collaboration with King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), scientists at The University of Manchester have developed a cutting-edge hydrogen sensor that could enhance safety and accelerate the transition to hydrogen energy. The organic semiconductor sensor, according to Nature Electronics, detects minute traces of hydrogen within seconds, outperforming current commercial detectors.

Using a process called "p-doping," the sensor reacts to hydrogen by rapidly altering electrical currents, allowing for fast detection at temperatures up to 120°. Tested in real-world conditions, including leak detection from pipes and airborne monitoring via drones, the sensor could be integrated into smart devices for real-time monitoring, making hydrogen systems safer across industries and homes. The researchers are refining the technology to enhance its long-term stability and practical applications.