Friendship's Day Gift Guide: Kingston's Top Tech Picks for Every Kind of Best Friend

This Friendship's Day, celebrate the friends who make every moment memorable with Kingston Technology, a world leader in memory products and technology solutions. Whether your best friend is a passionate gamer, an avid traveler, or a creative content creator, Kingston offers the perfect tech gift to match their lifestyle. From high-performance storage to reliable memory solutions, discover thoughtful gifts that they'll use and appreciate every day.

Celebrate your friendship with a gift that's built to last—because great memories deserve great technology

For your Gamer BFF: 

Friendship deserves gifts that go beyond the moment. This Friendship's Day, surprise your favorite gamer with a performance upgrade they'll enjoy every time they play. Kingston FURY memory and SSDs deliver the speed and reliability to keep every game running at its best.

Kingston FURY Renegade G5 PCIe 5.0 NVMe M.2 SSD

Surprise your friend with the Kingston FURY Renegade G5 PCIe 5.0 NVMe M.2 SSD, designed for gamers and power users seeking maximum performance. It eliminates storage bottlenecks and drastically reduces load times, making it perfect for intense gaming, editing, and heavy workflows.

• With up to 14,800/14,000MB/s read/write speeds 

• Leveraging the latest PCIe Gen5 x 4 controller and 3D TLC NAND 

• Available in capacities from 1024GB, 2048GB and 4096GB 

Kingston FURY Beast DDR5 RGB 

Give your best friend's gaming rig the upgrade it deserves with Kingston FURY Beast DDR5 memory. Excellent for blazing through resource-heavy games, boosting frame rates, and handling intense multiplayer sessions, this memory delivers the speed and reliability they need for uninterrupted, high-performance gaming. 

• On-die ECC (ODECC) for improved stability at extreme speeds.

• Dual 32-bit subchannels for increased efficiency.

• Integrated power management for optimal power delivery.

For your Content Creator friend: 

For the friend who's always creating, give them a gift that works as hard as they do. Kingston's NV3 and KC3000 SSDs deliver the speed, responsiveness, and storage needed to keep projects moving—from the first draft to the final edit 

Kingston NV3 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD 

For the friend who's always creating, give them storage that keeps pace with every project. Kingston's NV3 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD delivers fast performance and dependable responsiveness, helping them edit, design, and multitask with confidence.

• Robust next-gen storage solution powered by a Gen 4x4 NVMe controller. 

• Delivers read/write speeds of up to 6,000/5,000MB/s

• Compact single-sided M.2 2280 (22x80mm) design allows for storage expansion up to 4TB 

KC3000 PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD 

For the friend who turns inspiration into reality, having the right tools makes all the difference. Kingston's KC3000 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD delivers exceptional speed and responsiveness, making it easy to edit 4K videos, work on complex 3D renders, manage large creative files, and switch seamlessly between demanding applications—so every project keeps moving from idea to completion.

• Delivers next-level performance using the latest Gen 4x4 NVMe controller and 3D TLC NAND

• Compact M.2 2280 form factor 

• With formidable speeds up to 7,000MB/s read/write

• Low profile graphene aluminum heat spreader 

For your travel-loving best friend:

This Friendship's Day, gift your travel buddy Kingston's external and portable SSDs so they can capture every destination, every detour, and every unforgettable moment without worrying about storage. Compact enough to go anywhere and reliable enough to keep every memory safe, it's the perfect companion for every journey.

Kingston XS1000R external SSD –

Always chasing the next adventure—whether it's hiking scenic trails, catching the next flight, or capturing every unforgettable moment along the way? The Kingston XS1000R is the perfect companion for your travel partner. From expanding storage on an iPhone 16 to backing up priceless travel memories, this sleek, pocket-sized SSD is built to keep pace with every journey.

• Speeds up to 1,050MB/s with USB 3.2 Gen 2

• Compact, pocket-sized form factor

• Includes USB-C® to USB-A cable and USB-A to USB-C adapter for broad compatibility with PCs, Macs, tablets, game consoles, smart TVs, iPhones, and Android smartphones

Kingston XS2000 external SSD 

For the friend who turns every trip into a cinematic story, the Kingston XS2000 is the ultimate travel companion. Whether they're capturing breathtaking landscapes, filming 4K content, or recording ProRes video directly from a compatible iPhone, its ultra-fast performance and up to 2TB of storage help keep every moment safe without slowing them down. Compact, powerful, and built for creators on the move, it's the gift they'll appreciate long after the journey ends.

• Speeds up to 2,000MB/s with USB 3.2 Gen 2x2

• IP55 rating with removable rubber sleeve

• Delivers speeds of up to 400 HD photos per second and transfers a 1-hour 4K video in under 30 seconds, making it ideal for high-res image and 8K video editing on the go

Kingston Dual Portable SSD 

For the friend who's always sharing memories as fast as they make them, the Kingston Dual Portable SSD is the perfect Friendship's Day gift. Whether they're swapping photos from a weekend getaway, transferring videos between devices, or backing up moments on the go, its built-in USB Type-A and USB Type-C connectors make sharing effortless—no extra cables needed. With ultra-fast transfer speeds and a sleek, pocket-sized design, it's made to keep up with every adventure you take together.

• Cable-free portable SSD with dual USB Type-A and USB Type-C connectors

• USB 3.2 Gen 2 speeds up to 1,050MB/s read and 950MB/s write

• Compact, lightweight metal design that slips easily into any pocket, backpack, or carry-on

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Cadence Introduces AuraStack AI Super Agent, the World’s First Agentic AI Platform for PCB and Advanced Packaging

Cadence (Nasdaq: CDNS) today introduced the AuraStack™ AI Super Agent on Cadence® Allegro® AI Studio, the world’s first agentic AI platform for printed circuit board (PCB) and advanced packaging design, taking designers from system planning to final product in a single AI-native environment. The Cadence AuraStack AI Super Agent, accelerated by NVIDIA Blackwell and NVIDIA CUDA-X, coordinates domain-specific AI agents across planning, implementation and tightly integrated multiphysics analysis domains to compress the system-design cycle through manufacturing. With the AuraStack AI Super Agent, Cadence is now the only provider with agentic AI solutions spanning the full electronic system design flow, from digital and analog silicon design, advanced packaging, through to PCB design, building on its ChipStack™, InnoStack™ and ViraStack™ AI Super Agents.

“The next era of AI infrastructure—spanning data centers, automotive, aerospace and physical AI—will be defined not only by silicon, but by the systems that connect, power and cool it,” said Michael Jackson, corporate vice president of R&D for System Design and Analysis at Cadence. “As hyperscale data centers deploy massive AI clusters and other industries advance increasingly intelligent, high-performance systems, engineering teams face growing complexity in PCB and advanced package design. Agentic AI orchestration, combined with trusted EDA and SDA tools, enables customers to move from manual iteration to intelligent, automated design realization.”

Agentic AI for Packaging and PCB Design

Building on the same architecture as Cadence’s ChipStack AI Super Agent, agentic AI is combined with principled simulation and optimization tools, leveraging a mental model of the design intent, to automate and orchestrate the design exploration, realization and signoff. The AuraStack AI Super Agent brings together automation and optimization for system planning, constraints management, physical structure definition, IP creation and reuse, place and route, design for manufacturability and multiphysics analysis across Cadence’s system design and analysis portfolio. It introduces a unified, AI-driven multiphysics foundation that concurrently models and optimizes electrical, thermal and mechanical behavior—including SI/PI, thermal, mechanical stress, drop, vibration and fatigue analysis—within a closed-loop environment, enabling earlier tradeoff evaluation and product-level optimization across the entire design flow. This continuous multiphysics feedback loop enables real-time design convergence, reducing late-stage surprises and improving overall system reliability.

The AuraStack AI Super Agent’s key benefits include:

• Accelerating time to market by 2X, with 15X productivity and multiphysics-driven quality—automating complex tasks, expanding design exploration.

• Unifying separate engineering teams around a shared, multiphysics-aware design environment with a single source of truth across domains.

• Advancing early and continuous multiphysics co-optimization to reduce late-stage rework and costly design iterations. Unifies Cadence multiphysics signoff solutions, such as Celsius™ Thermal Solver, Clarity™ 3D Solver for 3D-EM, MSC Nastran™ and Marc™ Linear and Non-Linear Finite Element Analysis Solvers for mechanical analysis, and Sigrity™ X Platform for signal and power integrity.

• Limiting expensive respins by identifying system issues earlier in development.

• Enabling product-level optimization, including co-optimization with advanced packaging approaches.

Industry Leaders Advancing Agentic AI with Cadence

Cadence is collaborating with industry leaders to deploy AuraStack AI Super Agent workflows for real-world advanced IC packaging and PCB design challenges.

NVIDIA is using Cadence to help automate and optimize increasingly complex system design workflows for its engineering teams.

“The scale and complexity of modern AI infrastructure demands a new design approach,” said Tim Costa, vice president and general manager of computational engineering at NVIDIA. “NVIDIA's collaboration with Cadence is advancing AI-powered engineering workflows that accelerate design convergence and innovation across the industry. The Cadence AuraStack AI Super Agent and the Millennium M2000 Supercomputer deliver up to 20X faster multiphysics performance, giving our engineers the capability to tackle the most demanding design challenges and bring the next generation of AI infrastructure to life.”

Cadence is partnering with TSMC to help customers accelerate advanced package implementation through AI-driven automation, enabling timely design convergence for increasingly complex multi-die systems.

“As advanced packaging complexity grows, customers need new levels of automation to achieve timely design convergence,” said Aveek Sarkar, director of the Ecosystem and Alliance Management Division at TSMC. “Our long-standing partnership with Open Innovation Platform® (OIP) ecosystem partners like Cadence to deliver advanced package design and verification solutions for TSMC 3DFabric® technologies helps customers accelerate the realization of next-generation multi-die systems for AI and high-performance computing applications. Through our multi-year collaboration on substrate auto routing, we are already enabling customers to boost productivity by 100X while delivering quality of results similar to manual routing.”

Socionext is leveraging Cadence to accelerate the automation and optimization of increasingly complex semiconductor package and PCB design workflows.

“AI-driven agents are set to transform IC package and PCB design by automating SI, PI and thermal workflows and enabling generative design,” said Iwasaki Toshifumi, lead design execution leading unit, Global Leading Group at Socionext Inc. “This acceleration allows our engineers to focus on higher-value work like architecture exploration, margin optimization, and multiphysics tradeoffs, while capabilities such as automated routing and chip-package-board co-design accelerate convergence and reduce manual effort.”

FORVIA HELLA continues to advance intelligent, sustainable mobility solutions that will define the future of automotive technology.

"Working closely with Cadence has fundamentally changed the way FORVIA HELLA develops advanced automotive electronics. Using AI-assisted placement technology, a task involving the placement of 300 components that previously took up to four days can now be completed in just four minutes,” said Sven Hoenecke, president & CEO, Electronics NSA at FORVIA HELLA. “This step change in productivity allows our engineers to evaluate more design alternatives, optimize layouts earlier in the development process, and accelerate the development of innovative products without compromising quality. By automating repetitive work, our teams can focus more time on solving complex engineering challenges and bringing new technologies to market faster.”

Schneider Electric is collaborating with Cadence to apply AI-driven design automation and engineering expertise to accelerate electronic design workflows and scale institutional knowledge across engineering teams.

"At Schneider Electric, we see AI as much more than a productivity tool. Our collaboration with Cadence has demonstrated the potential of AI to accelerate design activities and improve engineer efficiency,” said Daniel Gheno, senior vice president, Innovation and Technology EM at Schneider Electric. “The next frontier is to combine design automation with engineering expertise, enabling companies to capture decades of know-how and make robust design decisions available to every engineer. We believe this is where AI can truly transform electronic design."

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WD Malaysia Recognized for Advancing Sustainable AI Infrastructure

As AI adoption accelerates globally, so does the need for data infrastructure that can scale responsibly. Western Digital Corporation (Nasdaq: WDC), the sustainable storage foundation of the AI-driven data economy, is committed to helping customers store more data with greater efficiency, reducing the physical footprint, energy consumption, and resources required to support the world's rapidly growing AI workloads.

Today, WD's Malaysia operations gained recognition for that commitment, earning three prestigious recognitions from the Sustainability & CSR Malaysia Awards 2026 and the Asia Sustainability Personality Awards 2026, spanning corporate, leadership, and practitioner categories. The honors reflect WD's long-term commitment to embedding sustainability across every layer of its operations – from the manufacturing floors of Sarawak, Penang, and Johor to the data infrastructure powering AI worldwide.

The awards, which are organized by CSR Malaysia Publication and the Corporate Sustainability & Responsibility Malaysia Welfare Society, recognize outstanding corporations that have excelled in helping drive the country’s sustainable socio-economic transformation.

WD Malaysia was honored with the Company of the Year Award (Manufacturing & Technology) under the Green Innovation & Sustainability Transformation category at the Sustainability & CSR Malaysia Awards 2026. Meanwhile, the Asia Sustainability Personality Awards 2026 gave Dr. Chandramogan Anamirtham, Senior Vice President of Global Operations at WD, the ESG Visionary Leader Award, while Ts. Freddy Kho, Manager of Environmental Health & Safety at WD, was recognized with the Sustainability Practitioner Award. The recognitions reflect WD’s long-standing commitment to responsible, sustainable, and future-ready manufacturing operations that are critical for delivering the storage foundation that the world’s leading cloud and enterprise customers trust to power their AI infrastructure.

Across its Malaysia operations, WD continues to advance operational excellence, environmental responsibility, and workforce development as part of its broader commitment to meeting global data storage demand. As AI infrastructure expands around the world, innovation in storage efficiency plays an increasingly important role in reducing the environmental impact associated with managing exponentially growing volumes of data. Central to this is WD's focus on developing storage technology that makes AI infrastructure more efficient, helping customers scale AI infrastructure more efficiently including increasing storage density while reducing power consumption, cooling requirements and physical infrastructure.

WD’s CSR leadership across Malaysia also supports the company's broader global sustainability targets, including 100% carbon-free energy by FY30 and net zero Scope 1 and 2 emissions by FY32. The WD Sarawak site is also advancing sustainability through a Renewable Energy Certificate (REC) agreement with Sarawak Energy Bhd, enabling 100% Scope 2 market-based emissions reduction since FY2024. This complements WD’s advanced substrate production and an enhanced glass substrate facility in supporting AI-driven storage innovation.

Driving sustainability at the corporate and individual levels

The corporate award recognizes WD Malaysia’s efforts focused on energy responsibility, resource efficiency, innovation, employee engagement and community impact. Dr. Chandramogan’s ESG Visionary Leader Award recognizes his role in championing sustainability as a strategic pillar of responsible manufacturing and business growth, while Ts. Freddy Kho’s Sustainability Practitioner Award recognizes his contribution to translating sustainability priorities into operational practices that strengthen WD Malaysia’s manufacturing excellence.

Dr. Chandramogan Anamirtham, SVP, Global Operations at WD, shared, “At WD, sustainability is not separate from manufacturing excellence – it is fundamental to how we innovate, operate and grow. Being honoured with these sustainability recognitions reflects the collective dedication of our teams across Malaysia and the world to advance responsible manufacturing and sustainable operations, and create long-term value for our employees, customers, and the broader technology ecosystem.”

“As global demand for AI-driven data storage accelerates, our commitment to responsible manufacturing has never been more critical. Every improvement we make in our operations ultimately helps customers build AI infrastructure more efficiently, storing more data while using less power, space, and resources. WD remains committed to advancing that journey through innovation, collaboration, and disciplined execution,” he added.

Beyond manufacturing, WD Malaysia invests in initiatives that create long-term value for local communities and the technology ecosystem. Through education partnerships, STEM programs, employee volunteerism, and community engagement, the company helps nurture future innovators and supports Malaysia’s digital and industrial transformation.

These recognitions affirm WD’s belief that innovation and sustainability must advance together. Sustainability is no longer just about how technology is manufactured, it is also about how efficiently it enables the world's growing AI infrastructure. As AI continues to drive unprecedented data growth, the future will depend not only on more powerful infrastructure, but on infrastructure that uses resources more efficiently. Through continued innovation in storage density, manufacturing, and operational excellence, WD is helping customers build AI infrastructure that scales both economically and responsibly.

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Sony Future Filmmaker Awards 2027 Opens Entries with Exclusive Hollywood Access for Shortlisted Creators

Entering its fifth year of connecting emerging talent with the entertainment industry, the Sony Future Filmmaker Awards has officially opened submissions for its 2027 competition. Established by Creo in partnership with Sony, the global program is designed to catapult breakthrough directors and storytellers directly into Hollywood's inner workings. Shortlisted filmmakers will receive an all-expenses-paid trip to Los Angeles from June 7–10, 2027, to participate in a four-day immersive masterclass program at the iconic Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City, culminating in an exclusive industry gala ceremony on June 10.

For the 2027 edition, the Sony Future Filmmaker Awards introduces the Immersive category, presented by Meta, welcoming short films that place audiences inside the story with immersive formats including 3D, 180°, and 360° video. As these technologies reshape contemporary filmmaking, this new category celebrates bold, experiential storytelling across any genre – fiction or non fiction, live-action or animation. The Immersive category provides a space for filmmakers exploring the creative potential of these formats.

Filmmakers are invited to submit their short films in six categories:

The Fiction category seeks narrative-led entries that convey an original fictional story or event. Submissions must be between 5 and 20 minutes in length. The winner, chosen from a shortlist of 10 filmmakers, will receive Sony Digital Imaging equipment, a Meta VR device and a $5,000 (USD) cash prize.

The Non-Fiction category is open to films between 5 and 20 minutes long which are predominantly factual in content. The winner, chosen from a shortlist of 10 filmmakers, will receive Sony Digital Imaging equipment, a Meta VR device and a $5,000 (USD) cash prize.

The Immersive category celebrates short films that use immersive video to place audiences inside the story. Submissions must utilise one or more of three Immersive formats (3D, 180°, and/or 360° video), be 5–20 minutes in length and can span any genre, from fiction to documentary, live action to animation. One winner will be chosen and a shortlist of up to two. The winner receives a Meta VR device and a $5,000 (USD) cash prize.

The Animation category is open to 2 to 20-minute long animated films using all available techniques, including but not limited to stop-motion, motion graphics, computer animation, drawn-on-film, rotoscoping, and experimental animation. Selected from a shortlist of five filmmakers, the winner will receive Sony Digital Imaging equipment, a Meta VR device, and a $5,000 (USD) cash prize.

The Student category rewards filmmakers studying a film course at a registered institution at a diploma or degree level worldwide. Institutions that make up the shortlist are selected by continent to ensure a diverse range of global talent. Submissions must be between 5 and 20 minutes in length and can be of any genre. Selected from a shortlist of five filmmakers, the winner and their institution will each receive Sony Digital Imaging equipment, and the winner will also receive a Meta VR device.

The Future Format category challenges filmmakers to respond to a technical brief that explores the creative possibilities of bold and innovative storytelling. This year Future Format entrants are invited to submit shorts created specifically for vertical viewing (9:16 aspect ratio). Submissions must be between 2 and 5 minutes in length, can be of any genre, and shot on any device. Selected from up to five commended entries, the winner will be invited to join the four-day workshop program in Los Angeles in June 2027 and receive a $2,500 (USD) cash prize and Sony Digital Imaging equipment.

The category winners will be selected by the judging panel. The Fiction, Non-Fiction, Immersive, Animation, and Student winners will be revealed at the ceremony in Los Angeles on June 10, 2027, and the Future Format category winner and commended filmmakers will be revealed in April 2027.

Also returning to this year’s Awards is the Sustainability Prize, set up by Creo and Sony to spotlight a short film that creatively communicates how environment, accessibility, diversity, equality and inclusion can encourage us to act together to ensure a positive future for the planet. The winner receives a $5,000 (USD) cash prize, Sony Digital Imaging equipment and promotion across the Sony Future Filmmaker Awards channels and website.

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Rapidus and Cadence Partner on Agentic AI for Advanced SoC Design

Rapidus Corporation and Cadence (Nasdaq: CDNS) today announced a collaboration to advance agentic AI for advanced-node system-on-chip (SoC) design by integrating the Cadence® InnoStack™ AI Super Agent into the Rapidus AI-Agentic Design Solution (Raads). The joint effort combines Rapidus’ AI-native design and manufacturing ecosystem for advanced-node semiconductors with Cadence’s agentic AI design orchestration technology to help design teams improve productivity, accelerate time to market and enhance design quality across the SoC design lifecycle. As part of this collaboration, Rapidus is targeting up to a 2X improvement in design turnaround time (TAT) over traditional flows.

The buildout of AI infrastructure, and the coming wave of physical AI-powered systems, requires tight, system-level co-optimization across semiconductor design, manufacturing, packaging and systems. Agentic AI is critical for this next generation of advanced SoCs. As part of today’s announcement, Rapidus is extending its Raads lineup with the introduction of Raads Navigator and Raads Indicator to enhance quality assurance and support designers in resolving design issues and challenges. Significantly, the new tools have been integrated with the Cadence InnoStack AI Super Agent to enable agentic design orchestration across key SoC workflows, automating and coordinating tasks from early architectural exploration through implementation and signoff. By applying data-driven optimization across the design lifecycle, the integration is intended to help teams manage advanced-node complexity, improve design predictability and scale engineering productivity while driving toward Rapidus’ design TAT reduction goals.

“Advanced-node SoC design increasingly requires AI agents that can orchestrate complex workflows across the design lifecycle, not just optimize individual tasks,” said Anirudh Devgan, president and CEO, Cadence. “By combining Cadence’s InnoStack AI Super Agent with Rapidus’ Raads platform, we are extending agentic AI into a leading-edge semiconductor ecosystem, enabling customers to improve productivity, accelerate design closure and bring more advanced silicon to market faster.”

Rapidus and Cadence will discuss the collaboration at CadenceLIVE Japan 2026, where Dr. Atsuyoshi Koike, representative director and CEO of Rapidus will deliver a keynote on how Rapidus is evolving Raads with Cadence Agentic AI and EDA to improve efficiency and quality in advanced-node SoC development.

“At its completion, our Innovative Integration for Manufacturing facility will be the most advanced, AI-native foundry where AI is incorporated at almost every stage of semiconductor manufacturing,” said Koike. “By evolving Raads and integrating it with Cadence’s InnoStack AI Super Agent, we are strengthening our AI-agentic design environment to help customers manage increasing SoC complexity, improve engineering productivity and realize the full value of Rapidus’ advanced process technologies. In working closely with Cadence on InnoStack and additional Cadence AI Super Agent solutions, we see a clear path to significantly reducing design turnaround time and enabling faster innovation on Rapidus’ advanced nodes.”

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