Artificial Intelligence - Page 30

The world of AI chips hasn't stopped, and won't stop, with advanced packaging production capacity in short supply.

TSMC's new CoWoS plant in Nanke Chiayi Park is entering the "environmental review stage," reports UDN, with TSMC now purchasing equipment to help speed up the construction of the new CoWoS advanced packaging facility. At the same time, the two new CoWoS advanced packaging factories were planned to be built in Nanke Chiayi Park, but they're "not enough," reports UDN.

TSMC reportedly sent personnel down to southern Taiwan to scout for land for a third CoWoS advanced packaging facility. UDN reports that the Chiayi County Government previously announced that TSMC's new advanced packaging plant will be located in Nanke Chiayi Park, covering an area of around 20 hectares. The first CoWoS advanced packaging plant was planned to take up around 12 hectares of space, will be completed by 2026, and will create 3000 jobs.

NVIDIA has had a mega-successful last 12+ months riding the AI wave, with data center GPU shipments hitting 3.76 million units according to semiconductor analyst firm TechInsights.

NVIDIA has an absolutely dominant 98% market share in AI GPU shipments for 2023, with 3.76 million AI chips shipped. However, if you add AMD and Intel AI processor shipments, the total number only goes to 3.85 million. This means that AMD and Intel shipped only 710,000 AI accelerators, compared to the 3.76 million shipped by NVIDIA alone.

This also means that NVIDIA has 98% market share of AI GPU revenue, with $36.2 billion -- that's 3x the revenue of 2022, which stood at $10.9 billion -- while AI processor alternatives are coming from Google with its TPUs, AMD with its Instinct AI accelerators, Intel's Gaudi AI accelerators, and CPUs that feature NPUs for AI workloads.

Just before the weekend, Microsoft announced it was making changes to the controversial incoming Windows 11 features that will be exclusive to the company's Copilot+ PCs.

That feature is Windows Recall, which is a Copilot+ PC tool that enables users to access different times on their PC through screenshots the PC is continuously snapping. These snapshots are of the users desktop and don't hide any potential sensitive information, and are also stored in a single folder. Security researchers and the public raised serious concerns with Microsoft about the potential of hackers gaining access to the folder and the ramifications that could follow.

Microsoft has since responded and said it is adding additional security measures and encryption to Recall, making it much harder for a bad actor to gain access to Recall's data stored on a user's PC. Now, Microsoft has quietly pulled the build of Windows 11 24H2 update, which contains the Recall feature and was being tested in its Release Preview channel - usually the last stop before a Windows update is rolled out the public.

Apple unveiled its new ChatGPT-powered "Apple Intelligence" during its WWDC 2024 event, with a slew of new AI features... with smartphone competitor Samsung taking to its X account and posting this:

Samsung said: "Adding 'Apple' doesn't make it new or groundbreaking. Welcome to AI" taking a stab at Apple's just-announced Apple Intelligence. Apple Intelligence will launch with iOS, iPadOS, and macOS later this year... but most of these AI-powered features are already on plenty of Android-powered smartphones.

Samsung wasn't finished with the 'mean tweets' with another post on X that read "Moving my icons wherever I want since 2010... isn't that cool?" If you thought it was just Samsung jumping in on mocking Apple and its new ChatGPT-powered Apple Intelligence, you'd be wrong... smartphone maker Nothing also got on the mocking train, with this simple post on X:

The PC has been reborn -- at least according to Qualcomm -- with the wave of Copilot+ PCs with NPUs for AI workloads, and the biggest winner of them all? TSMC.

TSMC will manufacture Intel's next-gen Core Ultra 200 series "Lunar Lake" CPUs, AMD's new Ryzen AI 300 series APUs, the new Ryzen 9000 series "Zen 5" processors, and Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X series processors.

Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X Elite is powered by TSMC's new N4 process node, some of the Tiles on Intel's new Lunar Lake chips are made on TSMC N3B, while AMD's new Zen 5-based processors will be made on TSMC's 4nm process node.

NVIDIA's next-gen GB200-based AI server cabinets are expected to ship in "small quantities" in Q4 2024 at the earliest, with GB200 AI server cabinets to be fully unleashed in 2025.

In a new report from Ctee, we're learning that there will be a "slight gap" in the delivery time between each factory and the customer and that it "will not be available until next year." The outlet continues, saying that shipments can be expected, with multiple Taiwanese manufacturers "striving to increase profitability as their revenue scale increases".

NVIDIA's new GB200 Superchip is a monster, with the company supplying the front-end AI chip modules, Switchboards, power modules, chassis/cabinets, and more. It's expected to see the NVIDIA GB200 Superchip enter mass production in Q3 2024, with "legal persons" talking to Ctee, with the outlet reporting: "Hon Hai, the parent company of Hongbai, and Wistron, as well as Delta Electronics, Lite-On, Shengming Electronics, Yingguang, etc., shipments of GB200-related products will increase in the second half of the year and will further demonstrate strong growth momentum".

Apple has just unveiled its new Apple Intelligence system; in a new partnership with OpenAI, Apple Intelligence will integrate ChatGPT directly into the heart of Siri.

Apple Intelligence will help people with their everyday lives, create images and text, and privacy improvements, which is an important part for Apple. Apple Intelligence is Apple's multimodal, cross-platform approach to the future of AI computing, with generative AI features including text and image creation, an improved Siri assistant, and more.

The company says that everything you do withing the ChatGPT-powered Apple Intelligence won't be shared with anyone, including Apple. Most of the new Apple Intelligence features run locally on your device, but if more computing power is required, then it will go to the cloud. It features a new Power Cloud Compute standard that protects your data and privacy.

Well, well, well... it looks like Chinese companies that haven't been able to buy high-end AI GPUs like NVIDIA's AI stomping H100 AI GPU, are buying and renting AI GPUs but using them on US soil to skirt around US sanctions banning high-end AI chips from the country.

The Information reports that ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, has been renting out the best AI GPUs from NVIDIA from Oracle to use for AI. The news outlet reports from two anonymous sources that China Telecom has been making similar moves with other cloud computing providers.

Another source said that cloud companies Alibaba and Tencent have been reportedly talking with NVIDIA about setting up data centers in the United States, in order to get their hands on the best AI GPUs. The Information reports that two, unnamed (but smaller) cloud companies in the US had declined to rent NVIDIA's current-gen H100 AI GPUs because it "seemed to go against the spirit" of US sanctions.

GIGABYTE had some new GeForce hardware on display at Computex, but the dual-slot GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER AI TOP GPU wasn't built to run the latest games. Sporting a blower-fan cooling setup in a stylish silver and metallic shroud is about powerful and secure AI training and tools on a local setup without tapping into the cloud.

It's a complete solution from GIGABYTE. On the software side, you get the AI TOP Utility, AI TOP Software, and AI TOP Tutor. Using popular and powerful open-source models, you can train and query generative AI based on local data sources using powerful GIGABYTE AI TOP hardware that will include additional gear like workstation motherboards, memory, and power supplies.

AI TOP software already supports open-source LLMs, with GIGABYTE explaining that its software and hardware have been designed for professional and home use. This would be awesome to have in a room somewhere to play around with and create different AIs.

The president of SK hynix and the chairman of SK Group met with TSMC chairman and CEO C.C. Wei to discuss, and solidify their partnership in the AI semiconductor business in Taipei, just two months after SK hynix and TSMC shook hands on next-gen HBM4 memory and next-gen semiconductor packaging technology.

The two technology leaders discussed the progress and details of their on-going partnership, with TSMC contract manufacturing SK hynix's HBM memory chips, which are the key part to NVIDIA's dominance in the AI GPU market with its Hopper H100, H200, and Ampere A100 series AI GPUs.

Under the agreement announced back in April 2024, the two companies promised to use TSMC's advanced manufacturing process in the base die of next-gen HBM4 memory, which will enter mass production in 2025, one year ahead of schedule.