Google open-sources TorchTPU; Tencent opens Yuanbao Search API

Google said it will work with Meta, Hugging Face, Inferact and RadixArk to keep TorchTPU compatible with mainstream AI development tools, as with the original PyTorch. It also released a TPU agent kit to help developers migrate applications to Google chips and cloud and to troubleshoot errors during migration. The company upgraded LiteRT, its tool for running AI models on phones, laptops and embedded devices, to better support PyTorch-based applications.

Tencent Cloud said on Oct. 20 that Yuanbao Search was open to external users. The service has a hundred-billion-scale index and hundreds of millions of daily calls, and supports more than 50 core businesses including WorkBuddy, ima, Tencent FinTech and Tencent Video. It combines public web resources with Tencent’s content ecosystem and draws on 157 sources across 13 vertical industries including finance, healthcare, law and travel. Coverage of financial reports for A-share, Hong Kong, U.S., Japanese and Korean stocks exceeds 99%, according to the report. Before content is indexed, a large model parses pages and retains structures such as titles and tables, evaluates quality at the site, account and page levels, and prioritizes authoritative sources. Yuanbao Search is offered in rapid, standard and flagship versions, priced from 14 yuan per thousand calls, with results returned in JSON.

Honor launched the WIN2, WIN RT2 and WIN Turbo2 gaming phones in Hangzhou on Oct. 21, all with 2K 185Hz displays. The WIN2 uses a sixth-generation Snapdragon 8 Super Ultimate Edition chip, two fans and a 10,100mAh battery, with 100W wired and 80W wireless charging. The WIN RT2 uses a fifth-generation Snapdragon 8 Ultimate Edition chip, one fan and a 12,070mAh battery with 90W wired charging. The WIN Turbo2 uses a fourth-generation Snapdragon 8s chip, has no fan, and carries the same 12,070mAh battery with 90W wired charging. The WIN2 and WIN RT2 are on sale, with state-subsidy prices starting at 4,999 yuan and 3,149 yuan; the WIN Turbo2 will go on sale on Oct. 30 at a subsidy price starting at 2,251.65 yuan. Honor also announced a WIN tablet with an 8.4-inch 240Hz OLED display, a WIN headset with 40ms latency and 55dB noise cancellation, and two game controllers.

AMD said on Oct. 20 that FSR 4.1 will come to Xbox Series X|S consoles, and that FSR SDK 2.4 will add support for the Vulkan graphics API, addressing the limited scope caused by FSR’s previous DirectX-only binding. AMD is also rolling out a new frame-rate tuning optimization for FSR frame generation on Radeon RX 9000 series graphics cards to provide more stable frame rates in supported games.

QNAP announced on Oct. 21 two USB4 JBOD storage expansion units: the eight-bay desktop TL-D810TC4 and the 12-bay 2U rackmount TL-R1210TC4-RP. Both have 3.5-inch/2.5-inch drive bays for HDDs or SSDs and one USB-C 40Gbps port, and work with Windows and QNAP NAS devices. The desktop model also supports macOS, while the rackmount unit has dual power supplies. QNAP also introduced the QXP-40G2UC, a PCIe add-in card that gives Intel- or AMD-based NAS devices two USB-C 40Gbps ports.

OpenBSD 8.0 was released on Oct. 20 with improvements to virtualization, graphics drivers, hardware compatibility, networking and security. Its VMM/VMD virtualization system now supports multiprocessor virtual machines with up to 64 virtual CPUs, x2APIC mode, MSI/MSI-X interrupts for virtio devices, checksum offload and improved QCOW disk image handling. The DRM graphics drivers are updated to a version based on Linux 6.18.53 and add support for Intel Arc A-series graphics. The AMD64 kernel’s virtual address space expands from 4GB to 512GB, and ARM64 adds hibernation support. The package set includes KDE Plasma 6.7.5, GNOME 49, Xfce 4.20, Firefox 157, Chromium 154, LibreOffice 26.8, GCC 16.1 and PostgreSQL 18.6, along with Wayland 1.26.

Corsair announced the SABRE v3 PRO PureVector mouse on Oct. 20 in ULTRALIGHT, MG and CF versions, with symmetrical and right-handed shapes. The mice use a Nordic nRF54 series MCU, a 42K MARKSMAN X optical sensor, 100M optical switches and a scroll wheel encoder, and support 8kHz polling over USB-C and 2.4GHz. Corsair’s PureVector calibration technology, developed with AimLabs, analyzes a user’s natural movement in each direction and calibrates sensitivity to directional aiming bias. Corsair says it can improve aiming speed by up to 81ms (33%) and reduce directional bias by 18% on average. The ULTRALIGHT, MG and CF versions cost $179.99, $199.99 and $229.99.

Dune 3 will be released in mainland China on Dec. 31, the report said. The film is the final installment of Denis Villeneuve’s trilogy, with Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Florence Pugh, Anya Taylor-Joy, Rebecca Ferguson, Javier Bardem, Jason Momoa and Josh Brolin returning. New cast members include Ida Brooke and Nakoa-Wolf Momoa as Paul and Chani’s twins, and Robert Pattinson as a villain. Hans Zimmer returns to compose, and Linus Sandgren replaces Greig Fraser as cinematographer.