Business, Financial & Legal - Page 27

Google has slapped down $1 billion to construct two new cables designed to link the US and Japan. These cables are called Proa and Taihei.

According to the announcement, the new cables will be subsea and will be built by Japanese tech giant NEC Corp. More specifically, the company has planned to route Japan, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), and then Guam, with reports indicating that Google is already working on the Taiwan-Philippines-US (TPU) cable system, which will also be getting an extension to CNMI. Current plans for the TPU system are in the name - connect Taiwan, the Philippines, and the United States, with estimates putting its completion sometime in 2025.

As for Taihei, this cable system will be a direct connection between Hawaii and Japan. Moreover, Google has planned an extension of its Tabua cable system to Hawaii on its way to from the US to Fiji and Australia. The Tabua cable is being built by SubCom. Google has also said it will be constructing an interlink cable between Hawaii, the CNMI and Guam to "connect the transpacific routes, improving their reliability and reducing latency for users in the Pacific Islands and around the world."

Intel is well aware that it faces multiple obstacles in its course to becoming the biggest in the semiconductor foundry industry; where we're hearing Intel is talking to Taiwan-based factories that have worked with TSMC, to help its Intel Foundry business.

In a new report from DigiTimes, the outlet says that the strength of Intel's R&D power shouldn't be underestimated. The R&D technology -- including ASML's bleeding-edge EUV lithography machine delivered to its US operations at the cost of $380 million and split into a new Intel Foundry business -- is as good as and even ahead of TSMC with some of its revolutionary, innovative technologies.

The hurdles that Intel faces are a few: companies don't have the same trust in Intel to fab their chips as they do with TSMC, with high manufacturing costs, yield rates, efficiency, and on-schedule in terms of mass production aren't close to what TSMC is, and has been capable of over the years.

TSMC's list of its biggest customers has been teased. The top seven customers are Apple, NVIDIA, AMD, Qualcomm, MediaTek, Broadcom, and Intel, in that order.

In a new media report from Ctee citing unnamed investors, TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) has 7 main customers with their chips being fabbed in Taiwan: Apple with 25% of revenue for TSMC in 2023, NVIDIA is second with 11% and AMD third with 7% revenue generation for TSMC.

These companies -- Apple, NVIDIA, AMD, Qualcomm, MediaTek, Broadcom, and Intel -- all use TSMC's newer advanced processes. The report says that 5nm market share sits at around 70-80% while 3nm market share over 90%, which is thanks to the insatiable demand of high-performance computing (HPC) which includes AI chips like NVIDIA's A100 and H100 AI GPUs, AMD's new Instinct MI250 and MI300 series AI GPUs.

Microsoft has just announced it will invest $2.9 billion over the next two years in Japan, increasing its hyperscale cloud computing and AI infrastructure in the country.

The company will also boost its digital skilling program, aiming at providing AI skilling to over 3 million people in the next three years, to open its first Microsoft Research Asia lab in Japan, and increase its cybersecurity collaboration with the Japanese government.

Microsoft's various investments will support Japan's "key pillar to tackle deflation and simulate the economy by expanding the infrastructure, skilled talent, and security required to accelerate Japan's digital transformation and adoption of AI". This new $2.9 billion investment will be Microsoft's single largest investment in its 46-year history in Japan, which is also the site of Microsoft's first international office.

Samsung and SK hynix are reportedly reconsidering the construction of domestic semiconductor plants in South Korea after promising tens of billions of dollars into their operations in the United States.

The US government has been shoveling billions of dollars to semiconductor companies, including TSMC, Samsung, SK hynix, Intel, NVIDIA, and others through its CHIPS Act. Now, South Korean companies are slowing down with domestic semiconductor operations.

Korea JoongAng Daily reports that Samsung is "reorganizing its investment plan from last year" and that "speed control should be inevitable".

LG Energy Solution has announced that construction on its new battery factory in Arizona, Texas, USA, has started, with 7.2 trillion won (around $5.5 billion USD) ready to go.

This will be LG's second factory in the US, with plans to manufacture cylindrical batteries for electric vehicles (EVs) as well as lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries for energy storage systems (ESS). LG's second factory will be operational by 2026, with an annual capacity of 53GWh, 36GWh for cylindrical batteries, and 17GWh for ESS LFP batteries.

LG Energy Solutions is already building a battery plant in Michigan, while it has built two factories jointly-run with customer General Motors. LG also works with Honda, Hyundai Motor, and Stellantis to build joint factories.

Samsung is expected to be awarded more than $6 billion from the Biden administration and the US government's huge CHIPS Act, to expand its chip output at its Taylor, Texas-based facility, and more.

In a new report from Reuters, we're to expect that the $6 billion+ subsidy will be unveiled by US Commerce Department Secretary Gina Raimondo, with the funding to go into the construction of four facilities in Taylor. One of these facilities is a new $17 billion chipmaking plant that Samsung originally announced in 2021, while another advanced packaging facility makes up another factory, and the third will be a new research and development (R&D) center.

Reuters adds that these billions of dollars from the US government and into Samsung's coffers will be used as an investment in "another disclosed location," according to the sources. As part of this new deal, Samsung will more than double its investments in the United States to over $44 billion.

The US government has just unlocked a further $11.6 billion in funding to TSMC for its leading-edge chip-making fabs on United States soil.

The Biden administration announced it's signed a preliminary memorandum of terms with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) that will include $6.6 billion in funding for new chip manufacturing plants. The US Department of Commerce has proposed $5 billion in loans to help set up the plants with TSMC.

TSMC will now setup three new leading-edge chip-making fabs in the US, with two of them known about -- but the third new chip plant will be dedicated to making chips with 2nm or more advanced technologies. TSMC has had its US-based fab plants under construction for years now, with the company teasing it will enter high-volume production in the first half of 2025 at its first plant in Arizona.

Artificial intelligence-powered systems are truly impressive, but what datasets are they trained on? OpenAI has kept the answer to the question behind closed doors, and now YouTube has issued a warning to the company ahead of its release of Sora, its AI-powered text-to-video generation tool.

Creators of AI models use large amounts of data to successfully train their tools into whatever they are designed for. However, there is a major problem with simply grabbing data off the internet and using it to train an AI model that will potentially be used to generate money - copyrighted IP. This problem isn't new, as The New York Times and Getty Images have already filed lawsuits against AI creators for the theft of copyrighted data used to train models that are then used to generate profit.

The copyright debate regarding AI models heated up again in March when OpenAI CTO Mira Murati told The Wall Street Journal that she wasn't sure if Sora's training included data from YouTube, Instagram, or Facebook. Now, in an interview with Bloomberg Originals, YouTube CEO Neal Mohan reminded OpenAI that any kind of data taken from the platform and used to train AI models is strictly against the platform's terms of service.

The US government is demanding that ASML stop servicing some of the equipment it sells to Chinese customers.

In a new report from Reuters, the Biden administration wants Netherlands-based ASML -- who makes the top-of-the-line EUV lithography machines, with Intel recently buying one for $380 million to be installed in the United States -- to stop servicing equipment sold to Chinese companies "are a diplomatic and business headache for the Dutch government, but signs are it will continue to align with Washington on export restrictions," reports Reuters.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte's government doesn't want to make a blanket decision, but it seems that the country will now be slower in approving equipment servicing for Chinese customers, and quicker to deny them. The machines that ASML makes can't be made anywhere else, is virtually impossible to replace, and will eventually break down and need maintenance over time... something that will be much harder moving forward for Chinese companies.

Intel has just kicked off a new round of layoffs this week, which will see a culling from its Sales and Marketing Group.

The news comes from CRN, which reports that an Intel spokesperson confirmed that the company had made job cuts as part of its reorganization but "did not provide any further details." Christoph Schell leads the Sales and Marketing Group and is the chief commercial officer of Intel.

An Intel spokesperson provided a comment to CRN: "With the objective of continuing to deliver on company strategy and drive outcomes for its customers, Intel's [Sales and Marketing Group] announced changes to its organizational structure. We are confident in Intel's future and are committed to supporting all employees through this process, including treating impacted employees with dignity and respect".

South Korea's industry minister announced on Friday that the country has chosen 6 overseas partner institutions to create global technology cooperation centers, which will be aimed at advancing research projects that are focused on core technologies.

South Korea will build the new centers in partnership with US universities, including MIT, Yale University, Purdue University, Johns Hopkins University, and Georgia Institute of Technology in the United States, while in Germany, South Korea chose Fraunhofer.

South Korea's Industry Minister, Ahn Duk-geun, said: "The six cooperation centers will provide all necessary support for global joint R&D projects. We plan to come up with a global open innovation support strategy to promote M&As, technology transfers, licensing and the recruitment of competitive experts".

The large 7.5-magnitude that struck close to Taiwan yesterday has had no supply chain effects for NVIDIA in the country.

NVIDIA said in a statement: "After consulting with our manufacturing partners, we don't expect any impact on our supply from the Taiwan earthquake". We also recently heard from Wen-Yee Lee, a Taiwan-based semiconductor reporter, who posted on X, providing some updates from TSMC. The company said that "due to safety concerns, TSMC has decided to suspend work at fab construction sites across Taiwan today. Construction will resume after the inspection".

But the latest update from TSMC was extremely positive, with he post explaining: "Based on TSMC's rich experience and capability in earthquake response and disaster prevention, and regular safety drills to ensure full preparedness. Within just 10 hours after the earthquake on April 3rd, the recovery rate of wafer fab equipment has exceeded 70%, and the recovery rate of newly built fabs (such as Fab 18) has exceeded 80%. Although a few pieces of equipment in some areas were damaged, affecting production lines, major machines including all Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) lithography equipment remained undamaged".

Taiwan was rocked by a huge 7.5-magnitude earthquake yesterday, seeing TSMC evacuate its facilities, but the Taiwanese semiconductor giant was back to nearly 70% operations within 10 hours.

Wen-Yee Lee, a Taiwan-based semiconductor reporter, posted on X, providing some updates from TSMC. The company said that "due to safety concerns, TSMC has decided to suspend work at fab construction sites across Taiwan today. Construction will resume after the inspection".

But the latest update from TSMC was extremely positive, with he post explaining: "Based on TSMC's rich experience and capability in earthquake response and disaster prevention, and regular safety drills to ensure full preparedness. Within just 10 hours after the earthquake on April 3rd, the recovery rate of wafer fab equipment has exceeded 70%, and the recovery rate of newly built fabs (such as Fab 18) has exceeded 80%. Although a few pieces of equipment in some areas were damaged, affecting production lines, major machines including all Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) lithography equipment remained undamaged".

SK hynix is officially building a new advanced packaging facility in West Lafayette, Indiana, USA with an investment of around $3.87 billion. The South Korean memory giant will build next-gen HBM memory for future-gen AI GPUs, and would be the first advanced packaging for AI products on American soil.

The new $3.87 billion facility will see Indiana with a new advanced packaging fabrication and R&D facility for AI products, the first of its kind in the United States, with expectations that it will drive innovation in the nation's supply chain for AI products, as well as create over 1000 new jobs in the region.

SK hynix held an investment agreement ceremony this week, with officials from Indiana State, Purdue University, and the US government at Purdue University in West Lafayette, officially announcing the plan.

PCI-SIG initially announced the next-generation PCIe 7.0 standard back in 2022, but now the organization behind the PCIe standards -- PCI-SIG, duh -- has announced version 0.5 of PCIe 7.0, now available for member review.

PCIe 7.0 is gearing up for a full release in 2025, but don't think you'll see workstations or gaming motherboards with PCIe 7.0 connectivity when we don't have PCIe 6.0 in the consumer space just yet, and PCIe 5.0 is only penetrating that market now. We will be living with PCIe 5.0 for a while on the desktop and laptop before we see PCIe 6.0, let alone PCIe 7.0.

For now, the full specification of PCIe 7.0 were released by PCI-SIG, which include:

Amazon has decided to remove its "Just Walk Out" technology from its Fresh grocery stories across the United States, following the self-checkout system being plagued with numerous problems.

According to a report from The Information, Amazon has decided to axe its "Just Walk Out" technology from its Fresh grocery stores across the US, which includes a multitude of cameras, sensors, and 1,000 human eyeballs to function. For those who don't know, the Just Walk Out system was touted as an automated future way of shopping as consumers could simply walk into the store, grab what they need, pay for it at a counter without a cashier, and then leave.

During this process a consumer is constantly scanned by sensors and cameras positioned around the store. However, Just Walk Out doesn't involve zero humans, as reports indicate there are more than 1,000 real people in India scanning the camera feeds to detect that all patrons are accurately checking out. Additionally, these stores required high ceilings to achieve the appropriate camera angles for maximum monitoring.

A powerful 7.5 magnitude earthquake has struck just off the coast of Taiwan, resulting in tsunami warnings being issued for Japan.

The earthquake struck off the east coast of Taiwan, approximately 100 kilometers from Taiwan's capital, Taipei, which has triggered nearly 3m-high waves in some areas 1,000 miles south of Tokyo within the Okinawa prefecture. Social media videos show buildings collapsing, massive dust clouds, and widespread damage throughout the affected region. Notably, Taiwanese officials pegged the earthquake at a 7.2 magnitude, while the US Geological Survey stated it was a 7.4.

Now, reports indicate that some of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's fabrication plants have been forced to halt chipmaking, with staff being told to evacuate the premises due to safety concerns. Bloomberg has reported that some machinery within these fabs have been switched off following the earthquake, and at the moment, it remains unclear if this pause in production will impact the global chip market timelines for product releases.

TSMC is "sprinting" to conduct a trial production of its first production line in mid-April at its new Arizona fabrication plant in the United States, where if these tests go well, mass production is expected at the Arizona plant by the end of the year.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) said yesterday that its Arizona wafer fab plant is making good progress, as planned. The company is expected to hold a press conference on April 18 to provide more details on the exact progress of the Arizona plant.

The new US-based TSMC fab plant will begin mass-producing new 4nm process nodes in the first half of 2025 when the Arizona plant will be in full operation. The new Arizona lab will produce the same quality wafers as its bleeding-edge Taiwan-based facilities.

A tsunami warning has been issued in southern Japan after a powerful 7.5-magnitude earthquake struck near Taiwan just minutes ago.

Videos posted on social media and television in Taiwan show collapsing buildings in the eastern city of Hualien. Japanese media reports that the 7.5-magnitude earthquake could trigger 3m-high waves in some areas 1000 miles south of Tokyo in the Okinawa prefecture.

NHK urged people not to go near the coasts and to get to higher areas, with warnings on broadcasts in both English and Japanese. NHK had an initial tsunami of around 30nm hit the shores of Yonaguni, a remote island around 110km from Taiwan, warning bigger tsunamis could follow.