Tom’s Hardware Premium August 7 roundup is a guide to the publication’s recent semiconductor and data-center coverage, rather than a single industry announcement. The package spotlights a subscriber-only benchmark database, foundry plans for co-packaged optics, China’s domestic lithography ambitions and Samsung’s three newly named memory technologies.
Tom’s Hardware said it has rebuilt its browsable hardware-results database as Bench 2.0. The service draws on the same testing data used in its reviews and performance hierarchy pages, but is designed to let readers search and compare individual benchmark results between products. Bench is available only to Premium subscribers, according to the publication.
What does Tom’s Hardware Premium cover this week?
One featured analysis examines co-packaged optics, or CPO, through the plans of TSMC, Intel, Samsung Foundry and GlobalFoundries. CPO puts optical engines alongside a processor or ASIC, shortening the electrical connection that would otherwise carry data farther across a board or package. The intended payoff is faster data-center links and lower power use, an increasingly relevant engineering problem for AI systems that need to move data at unpleasantly high speeds.
Tom’s Hardware said its roadmap report covers TSMC’s COUPE plans through 2030, including a stated target of 400 Gb/s per lane. It also examines Intel processors with OCI chiplets, Samsung Foundry’s effort to offer a CPO turnkey service, and GlobalFoundries’ vendor-neutral OCI-MSA platform. Those are roadmaps and platform plans, not evidence that every proposed system is deployed at scale.
The roundup also points readers to its examination of Chinese chipmaking-tool development. According to Tom’s Hardware, China has announced a goal of building immersion DUV lithography machines capable of making 7 nm chips by 2030. Lithography is the light-based patterning step used to transfer circuit designs onto wafers, part of the repeated manufacturing loop described in this semiconductor fabrication explainer.
A domestic EUV machine remains a more demanding target because it requires a broader chain of specialized tools and equipment. Tom’s Hardware reported that more than 3,000 workers are involved in the effort, which it said has been dubbed China’s “Manhattan Project.” The publication also said China still relies on ASML’s DUV systems, while modern tools face export controls.
China’s memory manufacturer CXMT appears separately in the roundup. Tom’s Hardware said the company plans a new fab and has a 2030 target of 30% of the DRAM market, while access to advanced manufacturing tools and the challenge of expanding wafer capacity could constrain that plan.
Samsung’s contribution is three wafer-bonding-based memory concepts: zHBM, zNAND-O and BV-NAND. Tom’s Hardware said Samsung expects zHBM to reach eight times HBM5 performance, while zNAND-O could place four or eight NAND stacks on logic dies. BV-NAND is described as Samsung’s 10th-generation V-NAND and the closest of the three to commercialization. The publication says its technical breakdown of those announcements is free to read without a Premium subscription.
This story draws on original reporting from Tom's Hardware.
