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TSMC has announced that it will build 7 new plants this year, in a bid to "boost its global competitiveness" reports Focus Taiwan.

The 7 new plants will include 3 new wafer plants, 2 new packaging factories in Taiwan, and two new wafer plants overseas. These new facilities are being built, or about to be built, to meet the fast-growing global demand for high-performance computing devices and smartphones, says Huang Yuan-kuo, head of the FAB18 plant in Tainan, at the TSMC 2024 Taiwan Technology Symposium.

TSMC has had bonkers demand for its 3nm process, but the world's largest contract chip maker expects 3nm orders to explode by 3x this year compared to 2023. TSMC is also boosting its production capacity of speciality technology, with the proportion of speciality technology relative to all mature processes is predicted to increase to 67% this year, compared to 61% back in 2020.

NVIDIA has just posted its Q1 2024 earnings, reporting record quarterly earnings of $26 billion, destroying analysts' expectations of $24.59 billion. $26 billion in revenue for Q1 2024 are up 18% from the previous quarter, and up 262% from a year ago.

NVIDIA profits and revenues skyrocketed in Q1 2024, with record quarterly data center revenues of $22.6 billion, which is up 23% from Q4 2023, and a gigantic 427% year-over-year.

Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA, said: "The next industrial revolution has begun - companies and countries are partnering with NVIDIA to shift the trillion-dollar traditional data centers to accelerated computing and build a new type of data center - AI factories - to produce a new commodity: artificial intelligence. AI will bring significant productivity gains to nearly every industry and help companies be more cost- and energy-efficient, while expanding revenue opportunities".

NVIDIA, the world's leading GPU manufacturer, has just wrapped up its first-quarter earnings report, announcing it has completely exceeded sale expectations, pushing the company's stock above the $1,000 per-share mark.

The new financial report unveiled a remarkable achievement for NVIDIA. The company's revenue for the first three months, which concluded in April, soared to an impressive $26 billion, surpassing the $24 billion expectation set in February. This is the third consecutive quarter where NVIDIA has tripled its sales from a year earlier, a testament to the company's meteoric rise.

The surge is largely attributed to the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence-powered systems by tech giants like Google, Meta, Amazon, OpenAI, and more, further solidifying NVIDIA's position as a key player in this domain.

A new report from Bloomberg has revealed Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the world's leading semiconductor manufacturer, is prepared for China if the nation decides to take Taiwan by force.

In the event of Chinese military going boots on the ground in Taiwan, TSMC and Dutch company ASML, who makes the machines TSMC uses, have reminded their respective governments of their preparedness, as Bloomberg has learned from people "familiar with the matter" that both companies have built hardware-level kill switches into their machines that can be remotely activated.

The report states US officials approached ASML with concerns about a Chinese invasion, which ASML assured the officials that it's extremely valuable machines can be remotely disabled if required. Furthermore, the Dutch company is already running simulations of such an event to learn more about how a real-world scenario would play out if it ever occurred.

AMD is reportedly setting up a new research and development (R&D) center in Taiwan, with an investment of 5 billion yuan (around $155 million USD).

The US chip manufacturer will also seek subsidies from Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs' new "Big A+ Project" and that AMD CEO Lisa Su will be in Taiwan in the coming weeks for Computex 2024, where she'll also meet with the Taiwan government and discuss the new R&D center.

AMD's main GPU competitor, NVIDIA, recently applied with the Ministry of Economic Affairs for teh "Leading Enterprise R&D Deepening Plan" (referred to as the Big A+ Plan) which sees Asia's first R&D center in Taiwan, and Taiwan's largest AI supercomputer, the Taipei-1.

Taiwanese lawmakers are reconsidering the current regulations of nuclear power in the country that would heavily help TSMC.

TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) consumes most of the power generated in Taiwan, with the Taiwanese national legislature, the Executive Yuan, showed willingness to change laws after the new economic minister succeeding Weng Mei-hua, J.W. Kuo, said in the Executive Yuan that he thought nuclear energy was a clean power source.

The outgoing government has been stalling the increase of the share of nuclear power on Taiwan's national power grid, with data from national regulator TaiPower showing nuclear power makes up less than 7% of Taiwan's total energy. The recent comments regarding nuclear power regulation changes were made by outgoing NDC minister, Kung Ming-hsin, just as his government was handing power over to its successors.

A few of Apple's high-level executives have 'secretly' visited TSMC, with Apple wanting to secure TSMC's first batch of 2nm production capacity.

Apple Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams met with TSMC president Wei Zhejia, with Apple wanting the first batches of 2nm production capacity, but TSMC benefits big time with NT$600 billion (around $18.6 billion USD or so), which is a new high for the Taiwanese contract chip manufacturer.

Apple has been working closely with TSMC for many years now, with the A-series processors used in iPhones, the long-term plan for the M-series processors inside of the latest iPads and MacBook laptops, with the "key driver" behind this being Apple COO Jeff Williams. The new wave of package production capacity and cooperation with TSMC for Apple's self-developed AI chips, is a very important step.

The European Commission has officially launched an investigation into Meta and it's products, specifically Facebook and Instagram, to see if its breached the Digital Services Act (DSA) in areas linked to the protection of minors.

The European Commission writes in its press release that its concerned that Facebook and Instagram aren't doing enough to protect the mental and physical health of children using the apps. The EU states its concerned specifically with the platforms' algorithms as they may create a "rabbit-hole effects" that leads to behavioural addictions in children. Additionally, the Commission is concerned with the Meta's implementation of age verification on both platforms.

In simpler words, the Commission is accusing Facebook and Meta of having algorithms that cause behavioural addictions in children, which leads to them not wanting to put the social media down and participate in real life. Moreover, the investigation will evaluate if Meta is doing all it can to protect children from digesting inappropriate content, and isn't intentionally curating its algorithm to promote addiction.

The Australian government eSafety Commissioner entered into a legal battle against Elon Musk X, the social media platform formerly called Twitter, over its refusal to remove a terrorist attack video from its platform.

Australia demanded that all social media platforms respect its laws that state its illegal to host any content that depicts a terrorist attack. All social platforms responded to Australia's call to remove the video depicting what the Australian governments eSafety Commissioner deemed a terrorist attack, which was content of an Australian man attacking bishop Mari Emmanuel in Sydney, Australia. X responded to the call and blocked Australia-based users from accessing the content.

However, the eSafety Commissioner argued this decision doesn't represent the removal of the posts, and then proceeded to demand X remove access to the content on a global scale. Musk vowed to challenge the requirement by the Australian government, and on Monday, X won a reprieve from a federal court judge who declined the eSafety Commissioner's bid to extend its injunction to remove the content from X.

TSMC hasn't been shy about saying it doesn't need ASML's bleeding-edge High-NA EUV lithography machines to make its next-generation A16 manufacturing process.

TSMC Senior VP Kevin Zhang spoke at a conference in Amsterdam this week, where he said TSMC's new A16 plants could be designed to accommodate the technology, but it's not certain... remember, TSMC is the world's biggest contract chipmaker, and the largest customer and user of ASML's regular EUV machines.

The future-generation A16 manufacturing process is under development right now, but TSMC wants to hit the market with A16 in the second half of 2026... and the company might not use ASML's new High-NA EUV lithography machines to do it. Zhang said: "I like the technology but I don't like the sticker price. When actually High NA EUV will come in play, I think it depends on where's the optimum economic and the technical balancing we can achieve".