Five Things Tech: GPU, Micro Electric Tractor, Solar Power, Cheap Rockets, Quantum Threat
This is everything you should read about Tech right now.
Saturday is for Tech, welcome back!
The quiet comeback of the CPU, a solar‑powered tractor that walks behind the farmer, and a missile that costs less than a car are all quietly reshaping the world in ways that feel more like sci‑fi than business‑as‑usual headlines.
AI is reviving CPUs as workhorses for agentic workloads, solar micro tractors are lifting small‑scale farming in Malawi, cheap hypersonic missiles are reshaping global defense economics, and the quantum threat to today’s encryption is pushing a quiet but urgent shift to post‑quantum standards - all underscored by the simple idea that most of the energy we use already comes from the sun, if only we would stop treating it like a backup option instead of the default.
Enjoy Five Things Tech! 🤖
The CPU Was Left for Dead by AI. Now AI Is Bringing It Back.
For the past few years, central processing units, or CPUs—the core engines of most computers, from laptops to smartphones to data-center servers—have been something of an afterthought in the world of artificial-intelligence computing. Now, thanks to how fast AI is changing, they are the belles of the ball.
The explosion of so-called agentic AI has driven a wave of demand for CPUs, and chip companies are moving quickly to capitalize on it. Nvidia, the semiconductor giant, is known best for making powerful graphics processing units, or GPUs, which accelerate the computing needed to train and run complex AI models. It announced last week that it would offer a new server rack consisting only of its Vera CPUs, with no graphics cards attached.
We all love a good comeback story!
Solar-powered micro electric tractors bring light to farmers in Malawi
Developed by Aftrak, a business spun out of Loughborough University, in England, the waist-height “micro electric tractor” powers itself forward, while a farmer steers it as they walk behind. It features a steel “hardpan breaker” that pierces the layer of compacted soil commonly found at the surface of manually farmed fields in sub-Saharan Africa.
Breaching this layer and making deep furrows allows roots and rainwater to penetrate the soil, which slows soil erosion and maxmizes water absorbtion, making the soil more resilient to droughts.
This is a great example of the power of technology. Just imagine how this can increase the standard of living for so many people.
One Way or Another, Most of Our Electricity Comes From Solar Power
Of course, the Earth is curved, so that declines as you move toward the poles. But in a good spot, with a panel that has a conversion efficiency of 20 percent, you can get up to 200 W/m2. That means it takes just a few panels to provide all the electricity a home needs. So yes, most of the energy we use comes from the sun. You might even think of fossil fuel deposits as batteries, storing solar power for future civilizations. But with the old technologies, we’re getting that energy indirectly, after multiple conversions from one form to another—and inevitable losses along the way. Why not cut out the middlemen and go direct? No carbon emissions, no air pollution, no radioactive waste, no mining or transportation costs. And the sun’s going to keep shining for 5 billion years.
It’s so absurd that we are talking about gas prizes right now. We should all have EV and get energy from local solar and wind parks.
China’s ‘dirt cheap’ hypersonic missiles could upend global defence markets
The ‘cement-coated’ YKJ-1000 could prove ‘formidably competitive’ internationally if sold at the relatively cheap price of US$99,000
Chinese aerospace firm Lingkong Tianxing unveiled a hypersonic glide missile last week that has a range of up to 1,300 km (800 miles) and a top speed of Mach 7.
A rocket that costs as much as a car and can be fired out of something that looks like a shipping container. While we are still trying to understand how drones change warfare, here comes the next huge challenge.
Quantum frontiers may be closer than they appear
Quantum computers will pose a significant threat to current cryptographic standards, and specifically to encryption and digital signatures. The threat to encryption is relevant today with store-now-decrypt-later attacks, while digital signatures are a future threat that require the transition to PQC prior to a Cryptographically Relevant Quantum Computer (CRQC). That’s why we’ve adjusted our threat model to prioritize PQC migration for authentication services — an important component of online security and digital signature migrations. We recommend that other engineering teams follow suit.
2029 - that’s very soon. I guess it is time to start thinking about encryption again.
That’s all for now! Thanks for reading! If you missed last week’s Five Things Tech, you can find it here:
🤖
— Nico