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VMware has quietly exited the SmartNIC firewall business, and it's worth paying attention to why. SmartNICs — network cards with their own modest processors — have become essential infrastructure for hyperscale cloud operators, who use them to offload security and networking tasks, freeing up valuable CPU cores to sell to customers. VMware walking away suggests the economics or the competition simply didn't work out in their favor.
Closer to the hobbyist world, a firmware update for the Raspberry Pi five has apparently closed the door on a popular community workaround — manually upgrading the board's RAM. An EEPROM update now blocks the modification, which enthusiasts had been using to push the hardware beyond its factory specifications. It's a reminder that even open-feeling platforms have limits their makers are willing to enforce.
And on the silicon side, a researcher has been digging into the Scalable Matrix Extension built into Apple's M four chip — a low-level capability Apple hasn't loudly advertised. Early findings suggest it could meaningfully accelerate certain machine learning workloads, raising questions about what Apple is quietly laying the groundwork for.
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