It was a week of highs and lows. Nvidia proved to be a market darling again as the company's cheery earnings report drove up tech stocks. On the other end of the spectrum, T-Mobile announced it was laying off 5,000 employees, citing the high cost of acquiring new customers.

For VMware, it was all about VMware Explore, as the week was spent trying to show everyone that the company was still the same as it has always been. Never mind the man (Broadcom) right next to the stage behind the curtain; just ignore him for now. We'll talk about him when he's actually in charge.

And there was plenty to talk about anyway. Three of our top five stories of the week were from VMware Explore. If you'd like to see a complete roundup of our event coverage, tomorrow's editors' choice story will have our analysis of the event.

Here's this week's top 5 stories as chosen by our readers.

1. AMD touts DPU performance and new software migration tool at VMware Explore

AMD is showing how its $1.9 billion bet on data processing unit (DPU) vendor Pensando has paid off at VMware Explore, including through the chipmaker’s VMware Architecture Migration Tool (VAMT).

2. Palo Alto Networks CEO eyes $200B market, predicts real-time security shift

The enterprise security market has seen substantial growth to become an estimated $213 billion market over the last five years. The future will require a shift to more real-time and artificial intelligence (AI)-driven security delivered by platforms, noted Nikesh Arora, Palo Alto Networks chairman and CEO, during the vendor’s latest earnings call.

3. VMware enhances software-defined edge focus, rides it to private 5G

VMware updated its cloud orchestration capabilities that power its edge compute stack and secure access service edge (SASE) products, and also rolled out its own managed private 5G network platform. The vendor said these new services are tied to its expanded work with the software-defined edge.

4. AT&T Internet Air arrives to battle Verizon, T-Mobile FWA efforts

AT&T officially unveiled its oft-discussed new entry into the blazing hot fixed-wireless access (FWA) service market, targeting a market that its rivals Verizon and T-Mobile US have already extensively attacked.

5. How VMware plans to combat cloud sprawl

To help today’s businesses tackle this problem, cloud computing company VMware is rolling out expanded security capabilities in its VMware Cloud. The broadened tools were announced today at VMware Explore as the company’s estimated $69 billion acquisition by Broadcom continues to gain regulatory approval.