Last week, MGM Resorts disclosed a massive systems issue that reportedly rendered slot machines, room keys and other critical devices inoperable. What elaborate methods were required to crack a nearly $34 billion casino and hotel empire? According to the hackers themselves (and seemingly confirmed by a source speaking with Bloomberg), all it took was a ten minute phone call.

The alleged hackers behind the MGM issue, by all appearances, gained access through one of the most ubiquitous and low-tech vectors: a social engineering attack. Social engineering psychologically manipulates a target into doing what the attacker wants, or giving up information that they shouldn’t — in this case, apparently, by pulling a fast one on an unsuspecting IT help desk worker. The consequences range from taking down global corporations to devastating the personal finances of unfortunate individual victims. But what makes social engineering attacks so effective, and why are they so hard to prevent?

It seems counterintuitive to hand over sensitive information to a complete stranger, but attackers have developed ways to trick you into feeling comfortable doing just that. Those could include building trust over time, gathering information about you to seem like they know you or using a sense of urgency to get you to act quickly without thinking through what you’re giving up. That’s why common personality traits among cyber victims include being extroverted, agreeable and open to new experiences, according to Erik Huffman, a researcher who studies the psychology behind cybersecurity trends.

“Fear is an attack vector. Helpfulness is an attack vector,” Huffman said. “The more comfortable you are, the more hackable you become.”

Plus, digital environments have fewer social cues versus being face to face, so a potential victim is not as good at sensing potentially suspicious signs, Huffman said. We read messages in our own voice, projecting our own good will onto them, which normally doesn’t happen in person. There’s less information like social cues or body language to guide us or give us a gut feeling that something’s off.

A social engineering attack could be as simple as a faux-urgent phone call from a scammer to get your credit card information for low level theft. But there are increasingly complicated “Rube Goldberg attacks” that layer multiple approaches to fool you, according to principal researcher at SophosLab Andrew Brandt. In an example of such an attack, Brandt observed scammers first operating over the phone to get a target to click an email also sent by the scammer. Once clicked, the email would activate an attack chain that included malware and remote access software.

More likely, you’ll encounter it on a much simpler level. You might get a text from someone pretending to be your boss asking for gift cards or be tricked into clicking a malicious link that phishes your credentials. But one way or another you’ll probably run into it eventually, as an estimated 98 percent of cyberattacks rely to some extent on social engineering tactics, according to research from Splunk.

There are some other warning signs people can look out for. Having to download an unusually big file, a password protected zip file that can’t be scanned for malware or a suspicious shortcut file are all signs of a potential attack, according to Brandt. But a lot of it’s a gut feeling — and taking time to step back before proceeding to consider what could go wrong.

“It is a practice that takes repetition and rehearsal over and over again to reflexively distrust what people say to you who you don’t know,” Brandt said.

Huffman said people can try to avoid falling victim by acknowledging the limitations of a digital environment, and asking questions like: Does it make sense for this person to reach out to me? Does this person behave in a trustworthy manner? Does this person have the authority or position of power to give these directions? Does this person truly understand the topic we’re discussing?

Social engineering attacks happen constantly, to huge corporations as well as everyday people. Knowing that our good-natured traits can be our greatest weakness when faced with this variety of bad actors, it can be tempting to stop being nice altogether for safety's sake. The key is balancing our social instincts with healthy skepticism. “You can be helpful," said Huffman, "but be cautious.”

GE Health says it plans to develop an AI-assisted ultrasound imaging tool that is so easy to use, that even healthcare providers without specialized training will be able to operate it. The device's research and development will be funded by a $44 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has historically invested in the roll-out of new technologies in resource-poor settings to address gaps in healthcare access.

GE says the AI-powered imaging technology has been designed to be dispersed to low-and-middle income countries where the services of healthcare providers may be stretched thin. The ultrasound tool will be more effective at providing clear readings of lung and ultrasound scans across maternal and fetal care as well as pediatric lung health. These areas of medicine are particularly notable because maternal and child mortality is mostly preventable if medical intervention occurs early. Proper medical imaging is key to achieving timely diagnosis, guides treatment decisions and can improve treatment outcomes.

GE’s $3 billion ultrasound business, has recently focused on the development pipeline of AI software with the acquisition of med tech companies like Caption Health, which will help design this particular ultrasound device. The company appears committed to a strategy of increasing spending on AI-related projects both now and in the near future.

Modern tech journalism would likely look far differently today, if not for the efforts of Dorothy Vaughan, Katherine Johnson and a host of other trailblazing female reporters who staffed the Science Service throughout the publication's history. These journalists were among the very first science communicators, making sense of the newfangled technological wonders of the 1920s through 1950s and bringing that understanding to their readers — often in spite of the personalities and institutions they were covering. 

In Writing for Their Lives: America's Pioneering Female Science Journalists, historian Marcel Chotkowski Lafollette highlights not just the important work that these women performed but examines how their diverse the excerpt below recounts the hectic days and weeks in the outlets newsroom following America's use of a terrifying new "atom" bomb.

MIT Press

Excerpted from Writing for Their Lives: America's Pioneering Female Science Journalists, by Marcel Chotkowski LaFollette. Published by The MIT Press. Copyright © 2023 MIT. All rights reserved.

Team Spirit

In the weeks following the August 1945 dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Science Service staff frequently apologized for their tardy responses to any correspondence that had arrived that month. “Just about the time that your letter arrived here, we were completely showered with debris from the atom bombs,” Martha Morrow wrote somewhat facetiously. “This note of appreciation would have gotten off sooner if we had not had atomic bombs and peace crashing down on us,” Jane Stafford told another scientist. The journalists’ internal memos, however, exuded a sense of accomplishment. They had risen to the challenge of covering extraordinary breaking news; they had collaborated, cooperated, and served their readers well.

Because Watson Davis happened to be traveling in South America during the first week of August 1945, the five editorial writers remaining in Washington worked as a team, with each person applying a different interpretative frame to explaining the development and use of an atomic bomb. Morrow focused on the physics; Stafford looked at radiation and physiology; Marjorie Van de Water concentrated on the psychological and social implications; Helen Davis explored the chemistry of explosions; and Frank Thone focused on the biological impacts. Van de Water later recalled the electric atmosphere:

The telephone ringing all the day interrupted thought and work. Two of these calls summed up neatly the problems of the writer who tries to tell the public about the “findings of scientific research.” One inquiry was concise and practical, easily answered. “What is an atom?” this caller wanted to know. I gave him a convenient definition, but he was not quite satisfied. “That’s fine,” he said, “But now could you add a little something to make this whole thing more com- prehensible?” The other was a preacher. He was alarmed at what he had read in the afternoon papers. “What are the implications of this thing?” he wanted to know. “Where will it end? Is man going to destroy himself utterly? Does it mean the end of the world?”

As she concluded, “It was not possible to think of anything else except one stupendous fact—atomic fission, atomic power, atomic destruction, unlimited except by the unpredictable desires of the human heart.”

The general outlines and mission of the Manhattan Project had not, of course, surprised these reporters. Preliminary discussions about the feasibility of atomic weapons occurred long before the imposition of official secrecy. Helen’s daughter, Charlotte, used her family’s own special code words when she wrote her mother on August 7 from Rhode Island, where she worked in a US Navy laboratory:

The first I saw of the news was on the bus at Providence last night. A small boy came aboard selling the Boston Record which was headlined “Atomic Bomb Terror.” I regret to say that with all my previous knowledge and good guesses about Shangri-La and “that other place in Tennessee” I merely said to myself “Oh well, the Record!” and went to sleep. Not until I saw the Providence Journal and the New York Times did the import of the matter dawn on me.

Helen replied a few days later, apologizing for the delay—“as you can guess, the atomic bomb has us running in circles.” Watson was scheduled to be in Buenos Aires on August 6, yet cables to him at the US embassy in Argentina had gone unanswered. Helen quipped that she wanted to send him a telegram saying, “Having an awful time, wish you were here.” Messages from the office trailed Watson around Latin America, with Stafford’s telegram (“YOUR ATOMIZING STAFF MISSES AND GREETS YOU”) eventually catching up with him in Uruguay. His reply revealed his regret at having missed the action: “WHAT DAYS TO BE AWAY FROM WASHINGTON HOPE WE PLASTERED ATOMIC BOMB.”

Once the official technical report (a document known as the “Smyth Report”) was released, newspaper clients expected succinct technical summaries almost immediately. The news service produced that material in record time. Other than Martha, Helen was the only one on the staff who understood the bomb’s basic physics and chemistry, and she complained that she felt "more like Hamlet every day: ‘Oh, wretched spite, That I was ever born to set them right!'" Helen even quickly wrote an editorial on atomic power for the next issue of Chemistry, which was just going to press. On the afternoon of August 11, having “practically disintegrated along with the atom all this week," Helen wrote a catch-up letter to Charlotte. For the first few days, she explained, they had had only the bare announcement that the weapons had exploded as designed and civilians had been killed. In “the thick of the fight,” during the previous week, she had had doubts about their coverage, but “after seeing what the rest of the world did with the story,” she told Charlotte, she realized “we didn’t do too badly.”

New Questions

Helen’s September 2 letter to Watson (who was by then in Mexico and trying to get home) offered another perspective on the complicated office politics:

So much has happened, I probably can’t do more than hit the highest spots. First and biggest, of course, was the atom bomb. We will probably never be the same again! The story broke . . . with the President’s announcement. We had the War Department releases, but Frank was sitting on them, in a complete dither, but writing like mad. Nobody dared interrupt him. He finally yelled to me to do a piece on the atom and what it is. His story and mine were all that made the DMR [Daily Mail Report] that day.

Cool-headed preparation eventually prevailed. When the writers learned that the War Department planned to release the official technical report at the end of that first week, they decided to start drafting background material yet “not get too far out on a limb.” By the time copies of the Smyth Report arrived on Friday, Thone was already on his way to a meeting in Boston. Martha was racing back from vacation. For a time, “which seemed then just a few minutes short of eternity,” Helen wrote, “there was nobody but Jane, Marjorie, and me to carry on. When we three get together and pool our talents, you’d be surprised what a good physicist we make!” She described the Smyth Report as “amazing”:

It is multilithed, and over an inch thick. We got two copies. One we kept intact, the other we pulled the staples out of, so we could work on parts of it all at once. Jane Stafford, I think, has read all the chapter headings through consecutively, for she set herself that task. The rest of us just pick up any sheet at random and find at least one story that has to be written now, without bothering with anything else.

That report, Helen told Charlotte, made “all physics and chemistry B.A.B. (Before Atom Bomb, of course) completely obsolete,” and “is beautifully written and as exciting as a detective story.” Because the War Department wanted publishers to reprint the report “in whole or in part,” Helen “rear- ranged it and wrote connecting paragraphs,” making it the central focus of the September 1945 Chemistry. That issue was later praised for its clarity. Helen not only understood the technical aspects but also had the ability to explain them, as demonstrated in her revised edition of the “Laws of Matter Up-to-Date” feature in October 1945. During those same busy weeks, Helen even sketched mock-ups and text estimates for a brochure (“Atomic Power”) to advertise the organization’s capability to answer technical questions like, “When you split an atom of uranium, what elements do you have as a result?” And she compiled a three-page list of “important dates in the history of the atom” to share with her colleagues.

The real news story, though, would involve unpacking the weapon’s social, political, and economic consequences, attempting to understand whether and to what extent the awesome power would be “good only for the destruction of cities and of people” as well as how its existence might affect future generations. The implications of that “alchemist’s dream” (Helen’s ironic phrase) intensified public interest in all science. As the editor of the Pittsburgh Press told his staff, “Abstruse science has been popularized by a situation which has made the public read and discuss material it would otherwise never have heard of—because it involved the lives and safety of their own loved ones.” All over the country, adults and students began writing to newspapers, scientists, and public officials, asking for more information about atomic energy. One young woman who planned to major in chemistry and physics at Vassar College wrote directly to Vannevar Bush, head of the Office of Scientific Research and Development. Bush’s secretary asked Helen to respond. Helen answered each question (e.g., “Exactly what happens within the nucleus of the Uranium atom before it splits? What are the remaining materials after the atom splits? How long will it be before these radioactive materials disintegrate?”) with detailed explanations and references to relevant sections of the Smyth Report, and enclosed the latest issue of Chemistry as added encouragement to a budding young science student.

Google is continuing its shift away from smart devices by discontinuing support for both Zoom and Google Meet on its Nest Hub Max, 9to5Google reported. Some users have started receiving notifications that they can no longer join meetings from the device beginning September 28. The news follows Zoom's July announcement that Nest Hub Max support will end for the video calling service on September 30 — guess Google really wanted the services gone by October.

We were fans of the Google Nest Hub Max when it first came out in 2019, giving it an 86 in our review for features like its high-quality display and sound. It initially only offered Google Duo, but the subsequent emergence of the pandemic led to the rollout of Zoom and Meet, and the device soon became known (and bought) for video calling. Now, those programs are on their way out. Plus, Google stopped all game and third-party voice app support in June, and its Nest Cam still hasn't moved over to the Google Home app.

Nest Hub Max owners aren't pleased with the changes: One Reddit user said, "What will it become? A giant paperweight." Another user mentioned seeking a refund since the video calling feature convinced them to buy the device.

Panos Panay is leaving Microsoft after 19 years with the company, as confirmed via an official tweet. He’s been operating as the chief product officer with Microsoft, heading up Windows 11 development and the company’s Surface line. Rajesh Jha, Microsoft’s vice president of experience and devices, broke the news in an email to employees, as reported by The Verge.

Panay was hired on by Microsoft back in 2004 as a group program manager, overseeing a number of premium products. After heading the development of the initial Surface line of tablets and hybrid laptops, he was named the company’s chief product officer in 2018. His rise continued in 2021 when he was promoted to executive vice president after a successful Windows 11 launch, eventually becoming involved in a leadership team that directly advised CEO Satya Nadella.

There’s been no actual reason given by either party, but Panay says he has “decided to turn the page and write the next chapter.” The timing here is a bit suspicious, as Microsoft’s conducting a livestream event on Thursday that will almost certainly be dedicated to new Surface products. We reached out to the company for clarification as to why Panay left his position and what that means moving forward. We’ll update this post when we hear more.

As for what’s next, Microsoft has already said that Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft’s current corporate vice president of modern life, search and devices, will take Panay’s place as the head of the Windows and Surface divisions. The company also still seems committed to two areas of the business that Panay consistently championed: integrating AI into Windows 11 and mixed-reality. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in a statement released to TechCrunch that the company remains “steadfast and convicted in our strategy.” We’ll have to see how this unfolds Thursday during Microsoft’s Surface-centric event.

It's almost time for Amazon's annual fall hardware event, where the company typically announces a bunch of upcoming devices, including new entries for its ereader and smart speaker lines. On September 20, the company will stage Devices at its second headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. Amazon will not be streaming it to the public, but Engadget will be there to liveblog so you can follow along and read about its new products as soon as they're announced, starting at 11AM ET. 

Last year, one of the event's main reveals was the Kindle Scribe, a 10.2-inch ereader that comes with a pen that you can use to jot down notes on its 300 ppi display. It was launched with a retail price of $340 — and it still costs that much — but it's been on sale since. The company also announced a redesigned Echo Studio that features a new spatial audio processor, as well as a new Echo Dot with a larger driver, at the event. Plus, Amazon revealed a "no-contact" sleep tracker called the Halo Rise and a refresh of the Fire TV Cube. 

In the security department, the company announced two new cameras from Ring, along with the Spotlight Cam Pro and Spotlight Cam Plus. While those aren't quite out of the ordinary, Amazon is known to reveal more exciting devices at the event from time to time. In 2021, it introduced an Alexa-powered robot named Astro that can patrol your home, while it revealed a Ring drone that can fly around your house the year before that. 

Just like X (formerly Twitter), would-be competitor T2 Social has a new name, and it’s one that might ring a bell. Starting today, the service is called Pebble. And no, it's not a revival of the e-ink smartwatch company of yore.

Pebble said in an email to users that T2, which is run by former X/Twitter employees, was a placeholder name. It opted for Pebble after reviewing more than 60 options. The team plumped for that one because “a tiny stone can cause ripples across a whole pond. Just like sharing your stories and insights can create waves in our community.”

It’s certainly an interesting choice. Pebble (the smartwatch) blew up on Kickstarter, only to go out of business a few short years later. Fitbit snapped up its intellectual property and Google later bought that business. That certainly doesn’t seem ominous for the prospects of Pebble (the social media platform). 

The latest entity to go by Pebble hasn’t taken off in the same way as Bluesky (which recently passed a million users), Post (440,000 registered users as of June) or Threads (more than 100 million users in less than a week). Pebble has somewhere north of 15,000 registered users. In fairness, the service limited signups and opted for an invite system, which is also changing today as anyone with an X account can now join.

In addition, Pebble has rolled out a new tab called Ideas. Here, you can see a list of AI-generated suggestions for your next post or reply. Pebble CEO Gabor Cselle suggested this will help foster a kinder, safer and more enjoyable environment for everyone, though some might suggest that could lead to a more boring experience all around. As Wired, which first reported on the GAI feature, put it, "the Ideas feature’s sometimes peppy or stilted prose could easily leave one’s social feed feeling artificial and dull."

We're entering the season of long scenic drives and holiday parties, which means lots of time using your devices away from home and needing a quick recharge wherever you are. Currently, this is doable for a much lower cost, with Amazon running a sale on Anker's power banks and fast-charging plug-ins. The deals include Anker's 511 Power Bank, available for 50 percent off, dropping from $40 to $20. It's one of our favorite portable chargers, thanks to its slim size and ability to juice up an Android smartphone to 75 percent in just over an hour. Plus, it has a built-in plug that can act as a wall adapter if you have a spare cable handy. 

Amazon's Anker deals also includes two new releases: The MagSafe 3-in-1 Charging Cube is 20 percent off, bringing its price down from $150 to $120. We're currently testing the 3-in-1 device, and, so far, it's a solid upgrade compared to previous Anker multi-use chargers. It has 15W max charging and works with the iPhone 13 to 15, the Apple Watch models Ultra and one through eight and the AirPods 2, 3 and Pro. Then there's the Anker 315 67W USB-C Charger, which has dropped from $34 to $24 — a 29 percent discount. It's a great high-speed option for juicing up everything from your MacBook Pro to your new iPhone 15. 

Items like the 12-in-1 Docking Station, touting a 42 percent discount and dropping from $120 to $69 are also part of the sale. If you don't plan on giving up your older iPhone anytime soon, there's the USB-C to Lightning Bio-Braided Cable, down from $22 to $12 — a 45 percent discount.

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When Apple previews the upcoming version of iOS at WWDC, we expect to see all of the new features that will improve the iPhone. However, it’s not guaranteed that the company will take that opportunity to also update its popular wireless earbuds. But, alongside the arrival of iOS 17, a firmware update adds a few new features to the second-gen AirPods Pro, most of which will automatically adjust to your environment or activity so you don’t have to touch the earbuds or reach for your phone.

The headline addition is Adaptive Audio, a tool that automatically and “dynamically” blends transparency mode and active noise cancellation (ANC) based on your surroundings. Apple says it will change the noise control settings continuously throughout the day, making the proper adjustments as you move to different settings. Thanks to the H2 chip in the AirPods Pro, the earbuds use a combination of computational audio and machine learning algorithms that can discern between consistent and transitory noise. The technology inside of the earbuds also accounts for whether you're stationary or in motion, and if you’re listening to music or taking a call when making its automatic adjustments.

The whole idea is for this to happen without you really noticing. When there’s a change in your surroundings, Adaptive Audio gradually starts tweaking the blend of ANC and transparency. So if you enter a loud coffee shop or sit near a noisy A/C unit, AirPods Pro gently increases the level of noise cancellation to combat the clamor. The point is to smooth the transition, so the change in cancellation level doesn’t become a distraction itself.

Indeed, unless you’re really listening for the fluctuations or you encounter loud noise, you won’t notice them. It gradually increased ANC when I was washing dishes at the sink or grinding coffee to keep the audio where I could hear it clearly. But it also swung back to the transparency mode I previously had active when I ventured into a quieter spot. It works very well and it’s not jarring at all thanks to the gentle, but still quick, transition.

Photo by Billy Steele/Engadget

Before, you could switch between transparency mode and ANC by pressing and holding the AirPods Pro stem. You could also reconfigure one of those to just turn noise control completely off. Apple will allow you to swap one of the options that are accessible on the earbuds with Adaptive Audio, but the company is keeping it to only two settings via the on-board controls. As you might expect, Adaptive Audio is accessible through the Control Center where the AirPods options have been re-organized. There’s a noise control section that expands to give you access to transparency, Adaptive Audio, ANC and off just below the volume slider.

The next new feature is Personalized Volume. This “​​uses machine learning to understand environmental conditions and listening preferences over time to automatically fine-tune the media experience,” according to Apple. It’s another layer of hands-off adjustment that AirPods Pro will do when you move from one place to the next. However, the “over time” part means I haven’t used it long enough to really notice a difference. After only a few days of testing, I can’t say I’ve encountered a time where the adjustment was obvious. Maybe the feature needs more time to learn my preferences or maybe Apple’s claims that you’ll barely notice the difference are true. Either way, I’m not comfortable weighing the merits just yet. Personalized Volume is enabled via the AirPods Pro settings menu, just above the option for Loud Sound Reduction.

A handy new tool that I can see quickly becoming popular is Conversation Awareness. When you start talking, this feature automatically lowers the volume or pauses, focuses on voices in front of you and reduces background noise. It’s similar to Sony’s Speak-to-Chat, only that it completely pauses media when it detects your voice. Here, Apple reduces volume when you're listening to music and pauses things like podcasts and audiobooks. The main issue with Sony’s version is it’s easily triggered by light coughs or clearing your throat. After a few days of testing, Conversation Awareness is less susceptible to false positives, unless you’re really hacking. And if you find you don’t like it, you can disable it entirely in the AirPod Pro settings.

I was skeptical at first, but I quickly got on board with Apple’s decision to reduce volume rather than stop a song completely. It’s certainly less jarring, and the feature returns to your previous volume about three seconds after it no longer senses your voice or the person you’re speaking to. I’m sure there are some users who’d prefer a complete pause for all media, those who don’t want to talk over something in the background. But this is meant for quick convos rather than extended chats, and for that reason I’m OK with Apple’s implementation.

The only issue currently with Conversation Awareness is volume reduces on podcasts first when you start talking and pauses a few seconds after. It’s a bit clunky, and I think it would be smoother to just gently decrease the volume to zero. Thankfully, it works outside of Apple Podcasts with apps like Pocket Casts so you don’t have to worry if you’re not 100 percent in Apple’s ecosystem.

All of the features so far are exclusive to the second-generation AirPods Pro with the H2 chip. However, Apple is making improvements to other models too. For both versions of the AirPods Pro, third-gen AirPods and the AirPods Max, Apple improved automatic switching between the company’s various devices. This means faster and more reliable changeover between listening to music on your Mac and taking a call on your iPhone, for example. This update also requires iPadOS 17 and/or macOS Sonoma, depending on your stable of devices, for you to notice the difference. I do not have an iPad or Mac running those yet, so I was unable to test Apple’s claims here.

Photo by Billy Steele/Engadget

Apple also added a mute function to the most recent AirPods, both models of AirPods Pro and AirPods Max. Simply press the stem or the Digital Crown on AirPods Max to mute or unmute yourself during calls. It’s straightforward, but it’s also a welcome update. You’ll see a banner and hear a chime every time you change the microphone state, so Apple will make it clear which setting you're on via two cues on your iPhone, iPad or Mac. Developers working on video- and voice-calling apps will be able to implement this functionality as well through CallKit on iOS. So in addition to being able to press to mute with Phone and FaceTime, you will be able to do so on other popular apps like Skype, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and WeChat. Apple says a Mute API will be available for macOS apps as well.

Apple doesn’t typically offer such a robust update to AirPods alongside the annual iOS refresh. However, the additions of Adaptive Audio, Personalized Volume and Conversation Awareness expand the toolset of the most recent AirPods Pro so that you spend even less time physically pressing buttons to interact with them. And you can decide whether or not you even want to use them at all. I’ll bet you will though, especially at times when your hands are full or you might’ve stepped away from your phone.

The new AirPods Pro features are now available in the iOS 17 public beta. If you're okay waiting, the official release of the AirPods Pro firmware update will be available later today.

These days when we talk about what's next for chip design, we focus on things like cramming in more cores, increasing clock speeds, shrinking transistors and 3D stacking. We rarely think about the package substrate, which holds and connects those components. Today Intel, in the midst of its reinvention as a foundry company, has announced it's made a major breakthrough in substrate materials—and it's all about glass.

The company says its new glass substrate, which is set to arrive in advanced chip designs later this decade, will be stronger and more efficient than existing organic materials. Glass will also allow the company to cram more chiplets and other components next to each other, something that could lead to flexing and instability with an existing silicon package using organic materials.

"Glass substrates can tolerate higher temperatures, offer 50% less pattern distortion, and have ultra-low flatness for improved depth of focus for lithography, and have the dimensional stability needed for extremely tight layer-to-layer interconnect overlay," Intel said in a press release. With these capabilities, the company claims glass substrates will also lead to a ten-fold increase in interconnect density, as well as allow for "ultra-large form-factor packages with very high assembly yields."

Intel

We're slowly beginning to see what Intel's future chips could actually look like. Two years ago, the company announced its "gate-all-around" transistor design, RibbonFET, as well as PowerVia, which would let Intel move power delivery to the rear of a chip wafer. At the same time, Intel also announced it would be building chips for Qualcomm and Amazon's AWS service.

Intel says we'll see chips using glass substrates in areas in high performance areas first, like AI, graphics and data centers. The glass breakthrough is another sign that Intel is ramping up its advanced packaging capabilities for its US foundries, as well. That's something TSMC is reportedly stumbling on with its Phoenix, Arizona plant, which will require shipping chip materials back to Taiwan for advanced packaging.